What does the user want?

Introduction

This is 'THE' question.
But what tools, processes and methods do we have to help our investigations?
And more importantly is there any 'THE' answer to this question or are we likely to discover 'A' answer to this question. Is it that there is a 'the' thing that user wants or is it that there are many 'a' things which in a fuzzified corroboration constitute the 'want-space' of the user. And then if it is fuzzyfied summation of many 'a' wants then 1) are there conflicting wants in the set ? 2) how are the different 'a's weighted? 3) are there any pattern in the set of possible 'a's for a possible deduction about cultural, professional and user expertise related wants??
And one more aspect, are we only interested in wants of the users or the needs, comforts, luxuries as well! In other words, the utility and usability alone or the aesthetics, affects and experience as well.

Well, well... I know these are too many questions! But i think it is good to start with for we should know the problem space well in detail. An designing the solution is basically involves shifting and rearranging the problem space so it's good to have a detailed problem space. having done that lets take a look at status pro quo...

State of art
The Interaction design process has been long recommended to be centered on users. In literature and in practice plenty of process have been argued to follow User Centred Design process (UCD) but most of them work around the concepts of 'taking feedback' from users in context of a conceptual design rather than actually understanding the users' wants and needs. The limits of such an approach is that the user is constrained to ellicit behaviours (verbal, gestural or others) in context of the exhibited stimuli instead of the entire gamut of rich expectations, aspirations ormotivations. Further, the elicited data is 'reactionary' rather than pertaining to 'original wants'. Seeing the fragility and dynamicity of the wants the stimulant may be a influencer and disurber of the actual 'diaphram of perception' (called chitta in Indian psychology) .
Further, the data obtained has to be true of it's intent, in terms of being rich and realistic report of the actual mental, emotional and semantic dynamics of the embodied being, the user, during interaction. The obtained data has to be usable and applicable in design thinking process by the designers. The reactonary nature of data would have more of what one likes and dislikes rather than what one originaly wants. Validity, flexibility (from use context) and richness (for design decision purpose) of data availed is also need to be ascertained and reliability and reality (unadulterated) of the data needs to be focussed on.

Reframing the objective

In order to know what user wants we first need to know how to know what one wants. And then keep into consideration the context of a fluidity, dynamicity and immersiveness of interactive experiences.
I believe that all methods attempting to understand users are limited due to need of fragmenting the inner dynamics of users, coding it and then reconstructing it in the apparatus of designers being. The semantics of the understood and that of actually felt are likely to be disjunct or at least subordinate relation.
The sensitivity and internalised knowledge of designer would always continue to play a role in quality of finally produced designed artifact. However, a process of understanding users would surely even an experienced designer in enhancing and less risky design decisions but would also help expand the understanding of the users.
Nemerous researches in Psychology have been able to derive cognitive rules regarding users behaviour in perceptual and decision making contexts. The boundedness of such approaches have also been reported (Simon, Tversky,Kahneman). The role of affect in cognition has been one of the the most intriguing phenomena under study. While designers cannot afford to do fundamental research in cognition and affect but the need to have acceptance and application of the unveiled complexity of functioning of users mind cannot be denied.
Understanding users both in cognitive and affective domains have been theorised to be based on the semantics of the perceived stimuli (Lazard) and on the background affect present in the person (Damasio). Cultural conditioning of the mind playing a role in Semantics (Hofstede) and perceptual cognition (probably at the level of pattern making) is an issue in cross cultural design
So a simple question of 'what does the user want?' may be broken into several layers to be surer of one getting closer to the actual 'user's internal dynamics'. First is the layer of 'what users or in general people want' then one can further break it down to 'what do the users or people in this culture want' and then to the sepcific user category of gender/ age/ profession want' . So a repository of knowledge on users in general would help focus on a suitable process to answer the above question. In background of the repository one would further explore the user in context of the interaction intende to be (re)designed.
One final issue would still be left..so what even if we have understood the user satisfactorily... how does this data help us make design decisions.. for the complexity of the information extracted from user would be so inormous that a framework for it's use by the designer will have to be evolved. Probably a meachanism to help internalise the user data by the designed in step by step process.
As future is going to be more and more about understanding the users and using that to design.. the search for directions and guidlined, processes and methods is going to be more and more invested into by academia and the industry alike. And this approach is likely to emerge as a synthetic body of processes and methods from which a particcular approach may be chosen depending upon the need of the hour.