An approach that I was taught in an interaction design course (taken from SIGCHI research) that doesn't seem to be used much, is to have a sample of intended us

An approach that I was taught in an interaction design course (taken from SIGCHI research) that doesn't seem to be used much, is to have a sample of intended users design what they think they want (with simple approaches like pencil and paper, pasting UI widgets on paper, etc.), and then have the designer synthesize and refine those ideas into something more polished/concrete utilizing their own knowledge of the principles of the medium. This helps to more accurately reflect the mental models of users, and sometimes even helps elucidate functional requirements for the overall project that may not be readily apparent. This probably mostly works for internal/enterprise development where the overarching goal of the software being built is commonly understood by the user base, rather than a greenfield consumer facing product.