From my point of view, you haven't worked with good designers at all. All the good designers I know work hard on their research (both theoretical and concrete,

From my point of view, you haven't worked with good designers at all. All the good designers I know work hard on their research (both theoretical and concrete, regarding their current projects) and user testing afterwards. In many companies designers are required to work with analysts to improve ROI of their products. Although I completely agree that PSD is a terrible format for web design. I myself have been using Indesign and try to insist on designers using it when I develop.