Answer by Sensei Uexi:
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Dear SadResearcher, It is true that in the market, there is often not as much time (or funding) available, as may be expected for doing a far better-rounded job in UX design.

However, even if you had the time and funding, you would still need to understand what the clients want, right?

So the question is not whether you should listen to what the client wants, but instead – how can you learn much more than that?

Regardless of time and fund-availability, you should anyways be listing the user personas and the various stakeholders carefully.

After this, you will be able to ask the client questions related to each User- persona and stakeholder, and how they perform their functions. In turn, this will give you better insights, and helps you internalize the same distilled knowledge that a client may possess. Often the client realizes that there are some missing points in the knowledge-base, and then the client can agree that you should talk to the users and stakeholders yourself, and can sanction formative research too.

Some well-established benefits of research are –

User Needs: Research can help you understand the needs and behaviors of users, which is critical for designing a product that meets their needs and expectations.

Design Direction: Research can inform the direction of the design, providing insight into the best practices, emerging trends, and innovative solutions that will differentiate your product from competitors.

Validation: Research can help validate assumptions and ideas, ensuring that design decisions are grounded in evidence rather than an incidentally selective understanding.

Prioritization: Research can help prioritize features and design decisions, ensuring that resources are allocated to the most impactful areas of the product.

Risk Reduction: Research can help identify potential risks and pitfalls in the design, such as usability issues, security vulnerabilities, or accessibility concerns, reducing the risk of costly redesigns or negative user feedback.