Stakeholders Vs Users

Software engineers tend to talk about stakeholders - product owners, commissioners, support staff,  developers and users. User interface people talk about Users. You might think that the software engineers have got it right after all users are just part of the fluid mix of parties which go to making something right. 

I found this good example of a building from the 2012 Olympics designed by Zaha Hadid. Nice building, the design was done to reflect the fluidity of water. At the bottom is the olympic swimming pool. 

Unfortunately 1700 of the seats on the upper levels couldn't see the pool.  So given all the checks and acceptances by various levels you have to ask your self who was thinking  about this from the users/visitors perspective? Well, no one clearly. It was a rush job and mistakes were made ( it happens in Architecture). Now in this case it should have been fairly obvious, but its easy to see the error when it's something tangible like a building.  In the situation of software you can see that the stakeholders approach can de-prioritise the user's perspective. 
That's why for human computer interaction we act as advocates of the users' view because in the long run a software project is only as good as the people who use it.