I don't think the problem is lack of UX research. At least not from my perspective. Taking Blowater as an example, my biggest problem is that there are always performance problems before the UX problem. For example, I know the onboard is bad, but to fix onboard, I need to fix some other things first. I simply don't have enough manpower to work on top level UX and bottom level infrastructure at the same time. Adding UX research or designing only extends the todo list. But my problem is about checking off todo items. One UI/UX designer can produce 10 weeks of work for a developer in a week.