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Within the design of technology, the notion of the user, and user-centered design, has become a guiding principal for creating successful products. However, the concept of "user" is a non-trivial notion. HCI has historically viewed "the user" as an abstract concept, that is to say, it has been a reductive definition. As the field has become increasingly transdisciplinary the definition of "the user" has evolved overtime to reflect more breadth and depth. However, this is not always the case within industry practice. In this paper we present a situation and case study where, in industry, the reductive notion of the user posed distinct impediments to progress, how we were able to identify those and blend academic thinking into an industry approach to more success than either alone.