To complement and counter this post, I find that soliciting input from the end user is invaluable. This should be done during the planning and design phase as well as after release, ideally. You'll get the same input as if you were using it yourself, but you don't have to go around actually using all the code you write.

I've found that some/many coders and companies try to predict what users want, instead of actually asking the users. While there's nothing wrong with coming up with your own good ideas, I'm sure there are always things that you wouldn't have thought of that a daily user of your product is just itching to tell you about. A valuable side-effect of asking your users what they want and then giving it to them is that you appear to actually care about them. (Whether you actually do or not is irrelevant.)