I've been thinking a lot recently about how to create the best possible web application for my users and I've started to realise that no matter how user focused I've been in the past, I've completely missed the point.
I've always used usability guidelines, to influence the way I've created my UI's but as Alan Cooper said
in About Face and The inmates are running the asylum all I've been doing is painting the corpse - no amount of sanding a chair will make it into a table, if a table is what your users really need.
It's only since I've had the opportunity to employ user research and upfront design - as part of an intranet project I'm working on - that I've realise what is really needed to make a product usable.
This shift in perspective has been a real eye opener to me, but I've realised that in order to make this work there needs to be a shift in mine and other company cultures, to make user focus design a company concern.
There has been a lot of awareness recently that companies must focus on usability but they tend think this should be done at the end of an development iteration. Although this is a step in the right direction they are still only applying usability standard to something which might not meet the user's needs (goals) in the first place!
Surely the next step it to raise awareness of User (Goal) focus design such as the one Cooper advocates to make sure that at all stages the company is developing a product that it's users need!