Henry Ford once famously said “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” More recently, Steve Jobs said “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” What these quotes are really getting at is the danger of interview-driven design. If you ask people what they want, they’ll just say “faster, better, cheaper.” And creating new products is YOUR job, not your customers’. It’s unreasonable to expect customers to tell you what products to make. Imagining completely new products is not their in their skillset. Customer Interviews: Getting Out of the Building Customers don’t know what they want. But they do know what they like. And that latter aspect is what you’re trying to get at with interviews. Entrepreneurs are routinely told to “get out of the building” – to leave the safe, non-disconfirming confines of the office and go talk to people … Continue reading Customer Interviews: Conducting Effective One-On-Ones