But you simply cannot design a user-centric product without any users.
There is a lot of refining and optimising of products and interfaces that you can do without any user feedback. In real life, that type of activity takes up a lot of user experience folks’ time. We rely on our experience, education and training to do what we can to simplify, clarify and harmonise what is often a tangled mess of requirements, objectives and existing work.
Unfortunately, the client / product owner does not always want to hear that he does not know his users well enough to define or envision a product. Ultimately it’s the person with the budget who has the final say, and UX is still often seen as a ‘nice-to-have’ or something that can be added in towards the end of a build. Education is a constant part of our job and sometimes feels like a losing battle.
Getting to the stage where UX has enough buy-in, understanding and credibility to be able to go back to a business and say ‘we are going to talk to users to find out what your product should really be’ is almost a Holy Grail of user experience design. Not quite, perhaps, and it’s getting better, but it’s still the reality in many cases. Getting budget for research up-front is not easy.
So I think you’re right, Cougar, but perhaps coming on a little strong.