

Your customers do know what they want - jmorin007
http://rubyglasses.blogspot.com/2008/07/your-customers-do-know-what-they-want.html

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run4yourlives
So blatantly obvious, yet so often misunderstood.

I'm always reminded of that old Henry Ford quote whenever this topic comes up:

 _If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster
horse._

The beauty of this quote is not that customers don't know what they want, it's
that they're saying what they want exactly by saying "faster horse".

~~~
orib
As always, it's about asking the right questions. Asking a customer what they
want, and you'll come to the conclusion that they don't know what they want.

Customers know what they want to do. In your Henry Ford example, they know
that they want to get from point A to point B faster.

Customers don't know the right way of implementing it. That's why they hired
you to implement it for them. They don't know that there are better
alternatives to "a faster horse" out there, or better alternatives to an
access-based exchange-and-IIS-powered monster out there.

In the end, you have to find the right questions to ask to find out what the
customer wants -- this takes skill, and it takes digging, and extracting the
essence of their responses. It's part of your job to find out when a customer
is telling you what they want, and when they tell you what they think they
want, but are really describing the way they think something should be
implemented.

Figuring out the difference is the hard part.

~~~
taryneast
Yep, good way of describing the difference. Sometimes it's tough to tell the
difference too - but once you have, you can move forward and get on with
bringin the customer a solution that'll make you both happy :)

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swombat
I think this article is somewhat misleading, because "make something people
want" is said in the context of a product business, not a service business.

Of course your freelance business customers know what they want - otherwise
they wouldn't pay you to build it. But product customers are an entirely
different breed. They do have some idea what they want, so it's certainly
still correct to go back to your customers to get feedback about your product,
but it's misleading to equate these to service customers. With product
customers, they won't tell you what they want until you spend much energy
eliciting that feedback. It's not "simply a matter of translating business
needs into technical jargon".

~~~
taryneast
That's very true. My article was written with the service-industry in mind.
That being said, the person I was talking to was also talking with the service
industry in mind ;)

Still - you're quite correct that perhaps when creating "things" you may need
a different appraoch - as I've never really worked in the "things" industry I
can't comment. Anyone have any experience that would care to share their
viewpoint?

