Part of my job is to design user interfaces. First lesson is standardization. Keep screens as similar as possible.
That's where it starts already: the science system uses different screens. That's simply begging for user errors or at least misunderstandings.
Why not simply display the costs in the same way as done for all other buildings?
And yes, very dumb to have the cost info not visible and readable at all time. But, when you'd look at dozens of related threads, then you'll see that most are about the handling and the way it looks. Myself I find the user of tab pages on the Geologist completely non-typical for this game for example. For the few places where tab pages are used applies that the tab pages are at the bottom. Here, for some reason it had to be on top.
It's not that difficult to make it similar to something we all know. Define adding a skill as a task and you can make the screen similar to the general's screen.
I can't understand therefore that an experienced game development team is make such beginner mistakes. It's almost like the science system was developed by one developer, who was allowed to implement the UI as he liked it most. I would expect that there is one person responsible for UI design, or otherwise that the whole BB-team has to follow development guidelines describing how to implement the UI.
Of course, from time to time you will have to change your UI, so that it's more up-to-date with new standards.
We've all seen Microsoft's Windows 8, which is a (unfortunately) bad attempt to copy-paste the far superior UI of Androids. It's a bad attempt, since Microsoft didn't take into account that they have a different target audience. The average age of Windows users is much higher than the users of Androids. You can't except old people to handle such drastic changes very well. Neither did Microsoft take into account that Windows has a lot more functionalities and that it is very important thay users can still find and use their functionalities. When you put everything somewhere else without clear hints where they went, then you know you're heading for a disaster.
But at least Microsoft did one important thing correctly: when you change your UI, then change all of it in the same way. Don't start using different styles at the same moment. That's lesson 2 in UI design I would say; a lesson certainly forgotten when implementing the science system.