> I have never worked at a company that did user testing or if they did it was always done in a way or interpreted in a way to back up the designer's opinion
My teammates just came back from an on-site user test, and the lead designer's own report describes how some features which he had pushed for were not working out for the users.
We have always done user tests, and we have always applied the results if they were meaningful, from balance to UI tuning to, sometimes, scraping entire features. There's plenty of companies that do this, and individual designers that really care about the user more than their own ideas.
My teammates just came back from an on-site user test, and the lead designer's own report describes how some features which he had pushed for were not working out for the users.
We have always done user tests, and we have always applied the results if they were meaningful, from balance to UI tuning to, sometimes, scraping entire features. There's plenty of companies that do this, and individual designers that really care about the user more than their own ideas.