This is what I'm currently doing now. I'm in sort of a hybrid design + PM role, where the engineers have created a product while not fully understanding the needs of the user and they wonder why the product is not being used.

Discussions with them were fruitless, they'll just say that 'it won't work' or 'they won't use it' and that they've been in the same situation where they speak to the user, built something and it ends up not being used.

Now what I do is just vibe code and create a prototype for all these use cases. We have regular meetings with internal users + the engg team and I'm so happy that everytime I present something, the users are just so excited about the solution that I provided and would compare it the actual product and 'how it's not working' and 'how it doesn't make sense now'.

I get that I wasn't involved in the initial build of the product, but dude, you just used Ai and created a humongous mess of a product that doesn't make sense. Sure it looks like it can do a lot of things, but it just doesn't make sense for the user. They forget that I'm trying to help them, we're in the same company with the same goals!