To date, our final product has become more usable and the designers are become customer experience advocates. It doesn't take the place of full usability studies and iterative design processes, but it's a far better alernative than omitting usability completely. Wow, this pretty much summarizes everything I've been troubled with for the passed few months. As the only UI person in my company, and having suffered through a recent reorg, I actually took a position as a Producer over a UI designer position at my company because I knew that I would have more input in the development and design cycle. As a Producer I can do information architecture, put ui tests on the schedule, and make sure that usability flaws don't make it onto the site.
Usability is more effective when the developers and designers understands what to look for.
I've been thinking about writing a guide for the designers and developers to use since it became apparent that they would not use a central UI person as a resource. While my managers had the best of intentions offering me a UI only position, I knew it was just an exercise in futility. As a Producer, I have the actual power to improve the UI on our site. Designing and runing valid user tests is a professional activity that requires aptitude, skill and a great deal of relevant training and experience in experimental science. To do it properly, you need to be highly skilled in user and task analysis, experimental design, observational studies, and data analysis.