Stop Asking Users What They Want

Observe, listen, and have courage to take a leap

We live in a competitive environment and from that companies derive the desire of creating new products or enter new markets to stay relevant, increase market cap and profits. But before that, they have to create new products or improve the current one that will allow them to get a higher market cap. And at one point, the management team will have the question:

What do users want?

It seems like a simple question with a simple formula when trying to build a new product or feature:

1. If your goal is to make things people buy and use, you should design what people want.
2. To do that, you need to know what people want — do research.
3. You find your core users, you study them and you ask them what they want.
4. Then you go and make what they told you they need.

Unfortunately it does not work that way. The first rule of user research: never ask anyone what they want. You know what people want? People want to be liked. (If Facebook gets one thing right, this is it.) When you ask someone what they want, it is very possible the answer you’ll receive will be what they think you want to hear. Or the response that reflects how they like to think of themselves. And also take into account that it’s almost impossible for an average person to want what they can’t imagine. You risk limiting the scope of your ideas because of the imagination of others.

Everybody lies

Even those who we would call honest, lack enough self-knowledge to give an accurate opinion. It may seem as a harsh statement for the designers who want to empathise with users.