You've made the claim. But really, that's just washing your hands of the problem. I've been part of that training. I'd call it a joke, but there's nothing funny about it. You aren't going to get familiar with these systems in an afternoon seminar with the vendor's representatives.

You say this:

> You can argue discoverability all you want -

Then just make my argument for me.

> because of the clutter and poor design of the system

Reducing clutter would make things more discoverable. Making things discoverable is part of good desing.

I'm not saying "make it shinier". That's a poor inference on your part.

I'm saying the metrics by which we are using to design these systems are just flat out wrong. They are confusing the what with the how. And I'm not even getting into how sometimes you actually want things to be complex or hard to reach because you want the action to be deliberate.

Counting clicks is wrong. And anyone who advocates for it is also wrong. Discoverablity makes things easier to use. For the people who use it. You have this platonic ideal of a user who always knows the software in and out. That user does not exist. Any given user will only really use about 20% of the software, but every user will use a different 20%. So that other 80% needs to be discoverable. You shouldn't need to memorize or hunt down on a screen of options for it.

And since that 80% is different for all users, it logically follows that the entire system needs to be discoverable.

And that's not to say you can't implement shortcuts and hotkeys and what not. But really, any software shouldn't be making people think to much about how they're doing something so they can focus on what they're doing.