doozers and fraggles

Sometimes it feels like I'm building fragile things that are difficult for other people to get a sense of the complexity therein. I get a sense of being a doozer from Fraggle Rock, building delicate creations that the Fraggles of this world will come along and consume without a thought to the intricacies of what has been created. You need to carefully explain and show the beauty in what you are doing, as the Fraggles see it as food.
UCD work, as delightfully expounded upon by Ant is often in this category, as is data modelling. I think it might be something to do with the abstract nature of the work, it is easier to engage with editorial or visual design.
Product Development is hard work, as it is much easier to get on and make something without sitting down and defining what and why you are building something first. Methodologies such as UCD and Scrum help you once you know what you are building and help you to build something that users will want and understand. However getting to the core of what you are creating is hard. the iPod is a successful digital music player, but look how many also rans there are in the world. One of the principles by the design team for the iPod was what is the minumum functionality needed, this is often a good starting point.