4 Adam Friedman

I believe that a good designer always listens to input from users; however, a good designer does not necessarily have to provide new features just because some users asked for them. For example: addressing every request or concern from the users of Facebook or YouTube would result in complete chaos simply due to the number of requests they might receive. Even if designers for these large projects COULD address each concern, that doesn't necessarily mean that they SHOULD address each concern. As I stated above, I believe that one of the qualities of a good designer is that they should listen to input from users. This is because the best idea could potentially come from a single user. It's also important because the same idea from a lot of users could point out a problem or a potential in your design. There is also a third option, however, in which case the user is simply wrong. This could mean that they're suggesting a bad design; a design that is too specific to their individual needs, in which case it would only clutter your design; or a design with a scope that is too big to feasibly tackle. 

A situation-centric approach could have been more or less awkward to do in order to obtain data, but I believe that the usability testing allowed us to get a glimpse at the behavior of the users. As a user myself, and by relation, an observer of others, I believe I had some insight into the user behavior for project 2. We still could have set up a more situation-centric approach for project 2 in which we could have observed more users using machines.