Understanding the users

Some goals, that customers have listed for understanding their users better, include the following:

• "We want to be more user-centric."
• "Curious how real customers use the app in real life."
• "Does the site engage the user, inspire him to explore?"
• "Acme would like to be a usability company."
• "How can we make the app sticky?"

With the ubiquity of competing applications, companies are turning to user-centered design, to give them an edge over the competition (or so that they at least don't lag behind). Understanding a product's users, what motivates them to use it, and so on, can be studied in usability tests, but should be more of a secondary goal. Usability studies aren't run to get input regarding the customer base of a product, but to determine whether the users find the product easy to use. Knowing who those users are helps to frame the results, but should not be the key goal.