Maybe? It depends a lot on the domain. If it's stable and well-understood, pre-development research can help, both the academic kind and the anthropological. But otherwise, the fastest way to understand the domain may be to ship early and often, while doing lots of user and use observation. And that latter approach teaches you things no amount of pre-development research can, like the right intermediate concepts as you turn human concepts into things that work well for the computers, the users, and the developers.
As an example, consider the social media domain when Facebook launched. No amount of ivory-tower ontology-building would have given them the right conceptual model up front, because the domain co-evolved through interactions between users and platforms.
As an example, consider the social media domain when Facebook launched. No amount of ivory-tower ontology-building would have given them the right conceptual model up front, because the domain co-evolved through interactions between users and platforms.