Why is ux important?

As a good software company, we must study the behavior of our users. And in our experience, we have come across projects that resulted in very high costs, largely due to the late involvement of UX. Just as there are successful projects that knew how to use user data for design.
We must be clear that the user experience always exists. It doesn't matter if the interface is good or bad. The user interacts and always generates their own user experience.
So it is necessary to ask ourselves the following question: Where will our software go if it is based on bad user experiences?

It is essential to know and understand who our users are

It is often believed that studying user behavior is very expensive. But the truth is that the cost for a bad UX can be much higher. However, if we had this information on the behavior of our users, if we knew who they are, then we would have a vision of the future. We would know where to go, how to grow and evolve. Therefore we must understand how the user behaves, what he uses, how and when he uses it. Consequently, we can adjust the design based on this behavior.
Talking to users often uncovers problems that are difficult to foresee. For this, we usually work with a representative group of users, who are observed working with the system for a while, thus obtaining a lot of valuable information.

Scenarios and user profiles

In the process, we work to define scenarios and user profiles. This allows the entire team to have a global and shared vision of the objective of the solution.
This process includes a series of questions to the client, whose answers we then validate with the users. These questions range from more general to more specific ranges and attempt to discover information such as objectives of a given task, demographic data of a particular user, etc.
When it is possible to understand the different user profiles, we are in a position to see more clearly the situation and the problems that must be solved.
We can imagine user profiles as characters. It can be a teacher, a child, a mother, a doctor; that is, any user who is going to use the software. But also the profile includes their daily routine, their interaction with the software, and the world.

Then scenarios are created where these profiles interact with the software. Knowing the users and their behavior allows you to prioritize the essential and secondary scenarios for your software. And this allows defining with more precision the scope of a project.
In short, it allows you to maximize the use of budget and time.

When to include UX in our software?

Of course, the ideal scenario is to start software development with prior knowledge of our users. But worse than including this knowledge late is never including.
Therefore it is always possible to do so, even if development is advanced or if the software is already productive.
In this case, it is a good practice to continue with the study of this experience and behavior, because it returns us valuable information to make new decisions about the objectives of the software.