Based on using the wallets in BTC world (Armory and almost every android wallet) i noticed that although the bitcoin confirmations are extremely slow in comparison to NEM they have one feature that makes it extremely useful in real life.
They (wallets) listen to broadcasted txs (transactions) and when they pick up one that is connected to your wallet they display the message of arriving tx immediately. That makes it usable in real life when you are buying something that needs to be done fast (paying on the counter, person 2 person etc.) because the recipient receives notification that you've sent him the money immediately.
Of course that notification is just that, a notification. It does not mean that the tx is confirmed. Yet. And the one who is receiving can decide to wait for x confirmations if he/she wants. Every such tx in BTC real life world is done in a such way based on trust except for when the large amounts of BTC are moved. No one waits for 1 confirmation even less for 6 (an HOUR!?!) to give someone a coffee they bought.
So my suggestion is to definitely include in the NEM software some "listening" part that will display a notification/warning that a tx is coming before the tx is included in the block because although we have very fast block generation pace, I still don't think it is fast enough to be useful when buying for example a movie tickets and you have a line behind you and you are waiting for a block to be created just so that the movie theater know that you've paid for your tickets.
In case you haven't seen how fast it is in BTC world here is a youtube link that shows how fast it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mguRpvf3aMc
When I was using NXT last time I didn't see they have that. We could really use that to our advantage.
Also now days everybody wants to be notified immediately when they (are about to) receive something. Especially money. Imagine: no more asking: Did you receive it yet? A: Not yet - is is still pending on your side?
Bitcoin isnt that lovely thing too…
A month ago I waited 6 hours for a transaction of 1,5 btc :o
That broke my legs… as we say in portuguese 
The network yesterdays blackout may bring us some lessons!!
Maybe it'll will be great to have a indication of what server nodes (main server basically i think) are online.
It would, also, be nice to have a list of what kind of bugs are being studied, resolved for in a future show everybody the coin evolution, like a PDCA (plan, do, control and act).
Thats just an idea!!
cheers!
Yes, great ideas! That would also made devs closer to users.