Design For or To?

Recently, the point was brought up during class that we are architects, so a majority of the time, we are designing for someone else, never for ourselves; with this comes the necessary inclusion of the user's wants and needs, usually seen through the eyes of an architect. But, we are only just bringing about a change within the design process to further include the user. Does this mean that we have been designing to instead of for?

What I mean is: have we been designing to further a goal, bring about a change, fulfill our own language and opinions of design, etc., ultimately eliminating the end goal of creating a space for the user? I can't help but think that if this is the case, the practice of architecture has been incredibly selfish up to the 21st century, when we are just now seeing self-build communities, design build projects, and the seemingly never-ending process of re-designing projects after interacting and collaborating with users/clients? 

The field of urbanism (and all its pieces and parts) is relatively new to architecture and urban environments, so its hard to imagine that we weren't always thinking about the "everyday" that Margaret Crawford describes. That is, the lived experienced shared by urban residents, "everywhere and nowhere, obvious yet invisible". The scale of everyday life is both large and small, and is both included and forgotten most times throughout the design process. The lived experience of everyday is harder to understand and include in rural environments, but should be easier to achieve in urban environments that are "created out of the demands of everyday use and the social struggles of urban inhabitants." 

How can we see the everyday in rural and urban environments and what does that look like? More than sidewalks, roads, and the otherwise "banal and repetitive" pieces of every rural/urban fabrics, how do we design for everyday life at a scale that is understandable and usable for everyone?