A couple of years ago I was in Japan with a group of engineers (and human factors folks and marketing as well) doing some broad cultural research - seeing the culture and also doing interviews in-homes. It was pretty open-ended stuff, and they were ready to go where the research led us - but at the same time, they staged a usability test with Japanese consumers, since they were already in the country. We weren’t involved in the test, but we had a chance to observe.
People came into the facility and were seated next to some equipment. They were shown two different versions of possibles supplies for the equipment. One was black, not well-labelled, and fairly rectilinear. The other was soft, brightly colored, with attractive labelling. The Japanese consumers exclaimed “kawaii!” and kept touching the second version, while pushing the first one away from them.
I was horrified - they needed to conduct research to get that? Couldn’t a designer simply make an intelligent design decision based on an understanding of what kind of reaction they wanted to create? This is a waste of testing!
And then I got over myself, the morally upright consultant, and I saw that my clients had their own clients who needed persuading, and that a video clip as “proof” was the way to do it. My clients knew what the right thing to do for their customers was, but they also knew what they had to do organizationally to get it done, and I realized they were to be commended for that.