Understanding is the key to strategic design.
Proper planning, listening, viewing, testing, reporting, designing, iterating, and so forth, can only be successful if they stem from understanding the user's tasks, overall goals, current processes, etc., from the start of the project.
In order to move forward, we need to know the moves that the user has previously made.
We need to clear our minds and focus on what the user wants to experience, and advocate for that in the design process. The user needs to be motivated to learn something new, and that something new needs to not only accomplish the user’s goals, but also aid in their productivity, through an easy-to-learn process.
It is important that we also “…trust what people do, not what they say. We need to observe and analyze participants’ actual behavior, rather than their attitudes, to guide and improve the design,” (The Elements of User Experience).
The end goal is to establish a functional user journey that is data-driven, research-based and effective.