Does user-centered design work?

Great design exists, but did we get them focusing on the user or the design? More often than not, there are great teams of smart people but they come up with bad designs. After some research, it we found that the problem is laying with how work gets done. Not only with the processes but also the techniques that are used. After looking at the data, the researchers found that the most successful companies follow no process at all, while the struggling companies were all about methodology. With each fail, they made their methodology more dogmatic, more rigorous. Successful companies however, focused on tricks and techniques in achieving their goals, and made sure their team knew these tricks and techniques.

What if we replace the user centered dogma? Maybe the user centered design is just an element that helps the people focus on the project and not the solution itself. The secret of great products are great teams, not great methodologies.

Below are two videos (part 1 and part 2) featuring Jared Spool, founding principal of User Interface Engineering.