I dislike doing "excessive" user research for an early product - people don't know what they want until they see/feel it. 

The closest process I aspire to benchmark on what it takes to design a consumer product from scratch is Jackson Pollock. https://i.imgur.com/cOOwlEx.png

Early stage UR can be useful if you’re solving problems inside of entrenched ecosystems. Generally speaking you’re not reinventing the wheel in those situations, you’re fixing very specific pain points.

If you’re working blue sky it’s completely useless because you’re playing the artist more than the ‘pr