
Automakers: Don't Ask Customers What They Want - csours
http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a12469411/dont-ask-november-2017/
======
theluketaylor
I listen to a few different screenwriting podcasts and one of the most
fascinating parts is the studio note process. Writers submit scripts and then
studio execs make notes in the margin and hand it back. In TV this happens in
a very compressed time, but with movies this can go on for years.

Studio execs are constantly trying to make characters more likeable or
artificially raise the stakes of the scene. Some characters should do
unlikeable things at times, then it's even more rewarding when they redeem
themselves at the end. Or you want a really memorable villain. Some stories
just have fairly low stakes.

Some of the most successful writers talk about reading "the note behind the
note". They take the criticism, but don't make the exact adjustment the exec
is looking for. They take it as an indicator the character isn't developed
enough yet or the story isn't engrossing enough. If the exec were absorbed by
the writing more their mind wouldn't wander enough to add a note.

I think that's a good attitude to have when producing anything of great
complexity. The fact a customer has a comment doesn't mean you should just
implement what they asked for, it means you should really look to understand
what they value in the current product and enhance that.

~~~
chiefofgxbxl
> The fact a customer has a comment doesn't mean you should just implement
> what they asked for, it means you should really look to understand what they
> value in the current product and enhance that.

I often felt this way with public education, even down to the elementary-
school level. When I was in school, specifically high school, I felt appalled
that my voice didn't matter. It was always some school board member telling me
that they knew best for me. And certainly that is true to some extent; there
are some insights adults will have that students just haven't been exposed to
yet due to limited life experience. _But they didn 't even bother to ask us
how they could improve school_.

An elementary school kid can still provide great value. Ask them what they
would change, and they may reply, "less homework". You know less/no homework
isn't the best solution, but maybe what they're really asking for isn't what
you hear on the surface. A plea for less homework could be a plea to make
education more exciting, without necessarily changing the dial on homework. Is
there a way to keep the same amount of homework, but make it more engaging or
meaningful that it feels like less work? I think at times we need to _dig
deeper_ on people's feedback, past the surface.

~~~
racer-v
I like your approach but in this example, kids really should have less
homework. It galls me that a 10 year old is expected to spend 8 hours confined
to a school building, and then spend a signficant chunk of after-hours on
homework. Unless this is supposed to be preparation for an adulthood where
you're never truly off the clock.

~~~
vkou
Not to mention that most of those 8 hours are incredibly unproductive.

~~~
asdffdsa321
School was honestly 1000x worse than work lol

------
tlb
In all the cases here, what the customer wanted was available in some other
car. Thunderbird owners said they wanted 4 doors. But there were several
4-door fast cars on the market which they didn't buy, so you shouldn't believe
them.

A common situation in startups is, there are two current products on the
market A and B. A has 99% of the market, B has 1%. The amount of feature X
(speed, ease of use, scalability, ...) they provide is limited:

    
    
        ---A----B-------------------------------------->  X
    

A startup is proposing to make product C. It will be awesome because it
provides way more X:

    
    
        ---A----B---------------------------------C---->  X
    

But you need to ask, if people _really_ value X, why aren't they already
switching from A to B?

It happens all the time that startups ask customers, "Do you want a product
with more X?" and they say yes. But if they're not already using the product
out there with the most X, you shouldn't believe them.

~~~
balabaster
Or more X comes at the cost of A and B. Car companies have a terrible habit of
making options packs where you have to choose between stupid arbitrary things
such as:

\- Auto-dimming rear view mirror

\- Compass

\- Blind Spot Information System

 _OR_

\- Heated seats

\- Heated Wing Mirrors

\- Decent sound system

There is _no_ reason you shouldn't be able to have all of these things
together on your vehicle, but they say "Hey, you can have one option pack or
the other, no compromises!"

Would I want a vehicle with more X? Absolutely I would. I would have one in a
heartbeat if it also came with A and B but it does not. And given the asinine
requirement I must choose, I will take A and B over X... even though I really
want X.

If a vehicle came with A, B _and_ X, I will take it over any vehicle that is
missing one of those features.

~~~
Stratoscope
The worst one for me is leather seats.

"Oh, you want safety and comfort features X, Y, and Z? We've got them,
exclusively available in our EX model. And you even get leather seats!"

But I don't _want_ leather seats, and I will never buy a car with them. I wear
shorts in the summer and I hate it when my legs stick to the seat.

If I can get a car with X, Y, Z and cloth seats, I'm in. But that can be hard
to find.

~~~
Unkechaug
Thought I'm the only one with this problem. Leather and leatherette are
disadvantages to me - wish I could go with a premium cloth option and not have
to sacrifice a more powerful engine, CarPlay, etc.

~~~
kpil
I once had a Peugeot with "sport leather seats", or something - it was a
rather nice coarse woven cloth in some synthetic material in the centre, and
nice leather everywhere else. Awesome.

In my current car, I really wanted the adaptive cruise control, but opted out
because of the mandatory leather seats in that trim.

~~~
hoorayimhelping
likely:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcantara_(material)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcantara_\(material\))

~~~
vetinari
It's not Alcantara, it is combination of cloth and leather, with leather on
the sides and cloth in the center.

My current car has it, it is great. It was also option named sport seats.

------
GVIrish
"Don't Ask Customers What They Want" still gets it wrong. It's not that you
shouldn't ask customers what they want. It's that you need to intelligently
examine customer feedback and decide

A. If a problem needs fixing at all

B. How to solve that problem or customer desire without doing away with what
you got right the first time.

Customers often don't know what is practical to achieve or what the tradeoffs
are. It is the job of the business to look at those things and find solutions
that will make customers as happy or happier with the product/service.

The flip side is, some companies go out and design products based on their own
desires and assumptions, and sometimes get that wrong too. The latest Macbook
Pros are a good example. Yeah the product is slim and pretty, but slim and
pretty is not a good thing to optimize for at the detriment of powerful and
useful. The new Macbook Pros aren't a flop, but one has to think they would've
sold a lot more of them if they sacrificed a bit of thinness for significantly
more computing power.

~~~
ScottBurson
> slim and pretty is not a good thing to optimize for at the detriment of
> powerful and useful

Well... most of the market seems to think that thin and light _is_ the most
important thing. It's just that there is a power-user market segment that has
different needs that are not as well served by the new models.

[Posting from my 2011 17" MBP, in case you're wondering which side I'm on]

~~~
GVIrish
I think the more general market would've bought the new Macbook Pros either
way. If they were the same thickness as before with more RAM and a few more
standard ports, the casual users would've bought them up and the more
professional users would've been happier. Maybe throw in a new color and
you're done.

------
xexers
McDonalds has learned this lesson as well. People say they want healthy
alternatives... but then the customers don't actually buy the healthy stuff.

[http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/03/22/mcdonald-
custo...](http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/03/22/mcdonald-customers-
have-made-it-clear-what-dont-want.html)

~~~
javajosh
Well, why would you go to McDonalds for healthy food? That's like going to
Vegas to work on your meditation practice.

Another example is the MINI Cooper, which has somehow kept growing and now
there are models just as large as the SUVs they were making fun of in their
early marketing.

~~~
cr0sh
That kinda exists with the Hummer, too - the H1 was huge (essentially the AM
General version made for consumers), the H2 was scaled down (essentially
bodywork on a pickup truck frame), the H3 was even smaller.

Maybe the H4 will be the size of an actual Mini Cooper?

~~~
TheSoftwareGuy
I believe they stopped producing hummers quite awhile ago

------
lighthazard
Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer designs his own car:
[https://i.imgur.com/2O4f9EO.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/2O4f9EO.jpg)

~~~
wpietri
Absolutely. I use the Homer example all the time when helping people with user
interviews.

I think it's ok to ask people what they want; it can spark some interesting
design notions. But it's important to realize that can have very little to do
with what they buy or are happy with. So also ask them why they want it and
explore how an expressed desire fits into the context of all their other
wants, both spoken and implicit.

At the end of the day, people designing something have to be true authors of
that thing. We can't outsource our judgment to anything, survey results very
much included. User ideas are sources of interesting design hypotheses, but
we're still responsible for testing them vigorously and producing a coherent
whole.

------
bluedino
Bob Lutz was CEO of Chrysler at the time, and they were market testing
different designs for the next Dodge Ram pickup truck (1990's). They went with
a design that the majority of people didn't prefer, however those who did
prefer it, _loved_ it.

They figured by going after the most loyal and vocal buyers, they'd have the
most success.

~~~
Zak
I remember when those came out. My mother, who owned a previous generation
Dodge Ram _hated_ the look. A decade or so later, she bought a Dodge Dakota
with similar styling cues. She didn't hate it enough to turn down the right
combination of price and features.

This is probably a good approach to most markets that are relatively
commoditized (early '90s GM, Ford and Dodge full-size pickup trucks were
roughly interchangeable): find some way to make yours stand out that a
fraction of users are really passionate about, then double down on it.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The 2nd gen Ram design aged terribly compare to Ford or GM's mid/late 90s
departure from brick-like trucks. You just don't notice how terribly they aged
because they fell apart and rusted out faster

------
slowmovintarget
Best phrase in the article: "the kosher pork chop of the automotive world".

For anyone curious about what the early 90s Cadillac Seville STS looked like:
[https://www.cars.com/research/cadillac-
seville-1993/](https://www.cars.com/research/cadillac-seville-1993/)

~~~
pc86
> _200-hp, 4.9-liter V-8_

No wonder

~~~
Zak
That wasn't bad for 1993. A Ford Mustang GT had a 235 HP 5.0L V8 for the same
year. By way of comparison, the current 2.3L I4 mustang has 310 HP.

~~~
theluketaylor
The 1985 - 1992 BMW M3 2.3L NA I4 had 192 HP in US emissions spec, so it was
perfectly possible to get good power out of smaller displacement.

Of course the price was low-mid range torque, something big displacement
engines have in spades. You have to thrash an s14 to get anything out of it.

------
curlypaul924
A different side of the story:

[http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/09/bob-lutz-
myth-11-lu...](http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/09/bob-lutz-myth-11-lutz-
hates-car-design-clinics/)

Bob Lutz is known for bragging about the Viper being designed "from the gut",
but Michael Karesh points out that Lutz's most successful projects at Chrysler
were based on both intuition-based design and extensive market research.

 _In the case of the 2004 Cadillac SRX, the designers successfully argued that
poor clinic results could be ignored because the general public couldn’t tell
what they wanted in the future, that they lacked “reach.” As we now know, the
first-generation SRX flopped. When the 2004 Grand Prix tested worse than the
old design, the VLE reacted by telling the senior executive board that he
wanted to take a baseball bat to the research group. Apparently the board
bought this “argument,” as they approved the design despite the clinic
results. The market then vindicated the clinic._

 _Lutz put an end to these practices. Designers’ passions and creativity are
essential to creating beautiful cars, and Lutz did what he could to free them.
But he also required that every design win its clinic by “a substantial
margin” to get approved. Designs with merely decent (or worse) scores were
revised, even if this or that gut suggested that the clinic results were
wrong, and even if this made the project late and over budget. As is often the
case, there isn’t a correct choice between “right brain” guts and “left brain”
clinic scores. Successful cars follow from the proper combination of the two._

~~~
csours
Thanks for the link, that's very interesting.

------
quirkot
There is a useful distinction that I've commonly seen in writing/editing. It
is that people are good at identifying what they don’t like, but are terrible
at telling you why or what to do about it. I’ve used this distinction to help
tease out feedback from ideation. If you’re in a UX or designer role, you’re a
professional creative… Random Joe or Jane on the street, not steeped in
technical knowledge, probably have terrible ideas for improving a product, but
are intimately familiar with their own frustrations.

------
patcheudor
The real key is that automakers have failed to think creatively when it came
to answering customer complaints in implementation. Take the one at the end of
the article:

"'I wish it was smaller and easier to park,' is probably a common complaint
among owners of full-size SUVs. Making an Escalade or Expedition smaller to
“please” such a customer would be foolish. But don’t bet against it
happening!"

Rather than making it physically smaller, automakers could take the approach
of using technology to make it feel smaller. That's what Infiniti did with the
QX80. It's an absolutely huge SUV, but has cameras under each of the side-view
mirrors, one up front, and another in the back. From this, they stitch the
images together into a 360 degree view that looks like the vehicle is being
watched by a satellite above. Despite it's size, it's easier to park than my
small Mercedes roadster which is so low that the front splitter can't clear
parking blocks, causing a great deal of anxiety every time I pull into a
parking space.

------
csours
This was interesting to me because it re-iterates the one of the lessons of
The Innovators Dilemma: doing what your customers ask can be dangerous.

~~~
slowmovintarget
Leadership without principles isn't leadership.

Doing what your customers ask without balancing that against a strong sense of
_why_ your product is a success leads to "kosher pork chops". It betrays a
lack of vision.

------
gxs
I'm a product manager at a large, trendy technology company.

The answer to this question is boring, because it's the same answer that ends
up being the answer for most questions in life, generally.

The answer is it depends. Sometimes you listen to customers, sometimes you
take a flier on something you think they might like that they haven't
answered.

The trick is to try a lot of things and get egos out of the way so that if
something sticks that isn't necessarily your idea, you can get on board and
enthusiastically move it forward.

Customers don't always have an idea of new things they want, or the solutions
to the problems they need fixed, but they very, very often know exactly what's
broken.

~~~
prewett
> Customers don't always have an idea of new things they want, or the
> solutions to the problems they need fixed, but they very, very often know
> exactly what's broken.

I think this statement is really insightful and gets to the heart of the
issue.

------
_greim_
I suspect that customers often really _do_ know what they want, rationally
speaking, it's just that purchasing tends to be more impulse and image-driven,
divorced from peoples' rational needs. The end result of modern marketing
science.

------
Anechoic
That explains the lack of decent infotainment systems these days, perhaps
availability of CarPlay/Android Auto will help moderate this view.

~~~
giarc
I think the fact that car companies are not tech UI/UX design experts is the
reason infotainment systems are so terrible these days. They can design a nice
interior, but designing a system that looks nice, works well, and can play
nice with iOS/Android/Windows/etc isn't their forte.

~~~
cr0sh
Car companies don't usually design these things; heck, most don't design many
of the parts of vehicles.

Everything is offloaded to third-party car part manufacturers who make things
to an OEM spec (and later supply replacement components to the repair and
maintenance market) - but in many cases they also supply their own parts,
which can be picked and chosen by the manufacturer.

In the case of infotainment, the standard unit is DIN size; usually double-DIN
for most systems today (hidden behind the plastic dash panels); the parts
manufacturer designs and builds a number of components and units for that
(along with software and such), and the car manufacturer picks it out of a
catalog (if there's something that will work). Otherwise a more customized
option is done (and then back to your comment of course).

This applies to engines, drivetrains, and virtually every other component of
the car, with the exception of the frame and bodywork (interior and exterior)
- though even there the part manufacturers lend their hands and expertise to
the task, because they have to supply replacement components for those items
as well usually.

Many of these parts suppliers used to be wholly owned by the auto
manufacturers (some still are), but more than a few are independent as well,
and supply parts to various manufacturers. Others are more independent, but
only supply to a single manufacturer or brand. All this is to say that an
automobile manufacturer today doesn't necessarily do everything completely in-
house like they used to. It is much more complicated and fragmented today.

At least, that is how I understand it.

------
pascalxus
yes, the customer isn't always right. The customer doesn't understand all the
tradeoffs. If you make a car bigger, that comes with lots of compromises: less
style, less fuel economy, etc.

~~~
Slackwise
The customer isn't always right, but, the customer also didn't ask for glued-
in smartphone batteries, removing the MicroSD slot, or removing the headphone
jack.

~~~
mikestew
Isn’t that back to the Fordian “faster horse”, though? Or perhaps that falls
apart with the glued-in battery, and instead it’s “you can have a faster
horse, but we have to take the legs off and install wheels”.

Or maybe analogies just don’t work, and it’s “you want it thin and waterproof?
We can do that, but we’re gluing the battery in.” No, customers didn’t ask for
such batteries, but customers did ask for other things that require a
permanently installed battery.

~~~
pessimizer
> Isn’t that back to the Fordian “faster horse”, though?

The Fordian "faster horse" doesn't have much merit, though. What customers
wanted was a faster cart. That's also exactly what they got.

What they wanted out of horses was for them to be easier to store, and cheaper
and less labor intensive to maintain. They got bicycles and motorcycles.

------
pif
Don't ask them what they want; rather, ask them which problem they are
suffering from with the currently available products. If you go to a doctor,
do you expect him to question you about your ailments or to ask _you_ about
how to proceed?

------
baxtr
To my experience this is not specific to the car industry only. Many large
business try to “ask customers what they want”, because “it’s all about the
customer”. And while I agree that many large enterprises have ignored
customers for all a long time, this new mantra is the right way either.

I believe a product needs to be designed deliberately to fulfill certain
customer needs/desires. The word design contains the element of making choices
_on behalf_ of the customer, seldom _by customers_. I think has been very
successful with this approach, even though some of their tradeoff decisions
haven’t been so popular, but needless to say that their products are very
successful.

~~~
bluGill
Henry Ford said "If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said a
faster horse".

Your job is to figure out what the customer need and sell them that. Sometimes
the customer knows better than you do so you need to ask. However you have to
beware of letting the customer jump to a solution. Figure out what their issue
really is and you can revolutionize your industry. Give them what they say
they want, and you take your chances.

~~~
tabtab
To be fair, customers _would_ have been happy with a faster horse.

~~~
baxtr
Question is _which_ customers are we talking about. Those who could afford a
horse would have been happier yes, but I think Ford tapped into a whole new
market

~~~
tabtab
I suspect horses were cheaper than cars back then, but cost is an interesting
question, including the cost of hay versus the cost of gas.

------
Sohcahtoa82
I think this article nails it.

I drive a Subaru BRZ. The back seats of it are so small as to be damn near
useless. I'm only 5'9" and I can't sit in the back because my head hits the
rear window. Even my 10 year old niece complains about the lack of leg room.

Now, if Subaru does research and finds that people are complaining about the
small back seats and so they make them bigger, well they've done it wrong. The
proper response would be to steer (no pun intended) those customers to a
Legacy, Impreza, or WRX.

To make the car larger would destroy what the BRZ was supposed to be: A small,
lightweight, inexpensive, economical, nimble sport coupe.

~~~
perardi
Those vestigial back seats are probably there just to make the car cheaper to
insure. A 2-seat sports car screams "death machine" to insurance companies.
Not a big deal at the Corvette/Cayman prices level, but arguably quite
important at the $30,000 USD price range.

(caveat: this is largely inherited folk wisdom, and I'd be glad for evidence
that insurance, at least nowadays, has enough data to realize what car is
likely to end up wrapped around a tree)

------
mac01021
[http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-
drum/2010/09/counterintuiti...](http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-
drum/2010/09/counterintuitive-world/)

> Back during World War II, the RAF lost a lot of planes to German anti-
> aircraft fire. So they decided to armor them up. But where to put the armor?
> The obvious answer was to look at planes that returned from missions, count
> up all the bullet holes in various places, and then put extra armor in the
> areas that attracted the most fire.

> Obvious but wrong. As Hungarian-born mathematician Abraham Wald explained at
> the time, if a plane makes it back safely even though it has, say, a bunch
> of bullet holes in its wings, it means that bullet holes in the wings aren’t
> very dangerous. What you really want to do is armor up the areas that, on
> average, don’t have any bullet holes. Why? Because planes with bullet holes
> in those places never made it back. That’s why you don’t see any bullet
> holes there on the ones that do return. Clever!

The relevance of this is left as an excercise for the enterprising reader.

------
penglish1
Okay, don't ask customers, but do think about it a bit. They don't want yet
another smartphone, physically embedded in their car running crappy, insecure,
counterintuitive, out of date software.

They've already got a smartphone. They already know how to use it's UI. Did
you know people drive different cars sometimes?

They don't want or need to be able to order Dunkin Donuts from the crappy,
insecure, out of date smartphone welded to their dashboard. If they want
Dunkin Donuts, they'll order them from the smartphone they already have.
Glueing it into the dashboard doesn't make it any safer to operate underway,
and if they've got to stop anyway - they'll use their smartphone. And it isn't
going to make you many dollars off those Dunkin Donuts referrals.

It seems they would like a way to hook up the smartphone they already have to
the car speakers, and possibly even a microphone, built-in somewhere near the
driver. Ideally multiple ways, since phone makers keep changing the game.

Maybe add some physical tactile control buttons, for volume for example. Maybe
that attached device needs to be controlled. You might be tempted to put a
touchscreen in there. Don't.

They've already got a touchscreen, which is unsafe to use while driving. Give
them more knobs and buttons they can use by feel. If you don't give them
another touchscreen.. they won't use what you didn't give them.

If you must put in a screen, make DAMN sure that the software (and hardware!)
behind it is as relevant as you think you can manage for the expected lifetime
of the car. Like 10 years. How about 20 years? This might seem like an
opportunity for planned obsolescence - it isn't. Just do it well, and do it
right.

If it absolutely must be more than just an audio+mic jack and some buttons
then:

* make it as secure as you can make it, and can be updated, securely (thumb drives with checksums are good, wireless, not so much).

* it is as bug-free as you can make it, and has the fewest possible features you can get away with - on the assumption that your customers will always have a <= 18 month old smartphone in their hands

Sure - we can rip out the crap from the factory, and we will, but that is just
more waste. Please do it right and maybe save us all some hassle.

------
mmsimanga
Interesting artile. My opinion, buying a car is a compromise decision. You
pick the feature(s) you most value and also factor in how much money you want
to spend. If the most appealing feature to you is no longer present in follow
up model then the car doesn't have the same appeal.

Personally I don't understand why pick up vans are becoming more curvy. I
prefer the more square type.

~~~
cr0sh
> Personally I don't understand why pick up vans are becoming more curvy. I
> prefer the more square type.

Probably fuel economy to meet CAFE standards (at least here in America - which
probably bleeds over to other markets); same reason why bodies (and eventually
frames) going to aluminum...

~~~
mmsimanga
Ah thanks. I am sticking to the old school models for now. In Africa it is
easier anyway to fix the old noncomputerized cars. It costs an arm and a leg
to just get a reading to tell you what is wrong with your modern car.

~~~
devereaux
Maybe... buy a reader? Aliexpress is here to help you.

------
cortic
This would be more compelling if it was not set in the backdrop of
advertising. Advertising is an entire industry set up to mislead the consumer,
with the aim of getting the consumer to make choices that they wouldn't
ordinarily have made by their own. This is adequate explanation of why people
don't buy things they 'want'.

------
mikestew
I think a quintessential modern version of this is the Scion xB. We have the
original style, 2005 version. We love ours, and the current plan is to drive
it until the wheels fall off, then go buy new wheels. Great mileage, great dog
car, throw a rack on top to carry bikes, and it's zippy enough for what it is.
I've hauled a couch in it, because my buddy's Chevy Equinox SUV couldn't. It's
basically a small, 35mpg SUV. We checked every box on the options list, and it
still came in at $20K If you were to ask me what could be done to improve it,
meh, could use a little more power than the 110bhp it puts out now. I mean, if
you _have_ to have an answer.

And here's the problem the article addresses: yes, I said it could use more
power, _but not at the expense of mileage efficiency_. That's the mistake that
Ford and Cadillac made: yes, you did what customers asked, but at the expense
of _other_ things that the customer assumed wouldn't change when they answered
the question. So what do we get a few years later for a Scion xB? A 50bhp
power boost, but at the expense of its awesome fuel efficiency. Wanna know why
we bought the xB and not a Honda Element or some Subaru that might be more
fitting to our needs? Because the xB gets 35mpg and the Honda and Subie don't.
Now that Scion's fuel efficiency is down there with the Honda and Subie, well,
why don't I just buy the Forrester I'd rather have were it not for the fuel
efficiency? They don't make the xB anymore, for whatever reason, and Toyota's
suggested replacement is just another generic crossover that is nothing like
the xB is supposedly replaces. I want my lunchbox-on-wheels back. Instead, I
guess we'll buy a Subaru when the time comes.

So go ahead and customers what they want. Then feel free to go do it, as long
as you can do it without screwing up the character of the model. (Which,
admittedly, is exactly what the last paragraph of TFA says.)

------
jvreagan
If you don't listen to your customers, you will fail. If you only listen to
your customers, you will fail. -- Jeff Bezos

~~~
acobster
More advice from a guy named Jeff: "Listen to your users, but don't let them
tell you what to do." \-- Jeff Atwood

------
pow_pp_-1_v
Customer feedback should be just _one_ of the data points a product
planner/owner uses when deciding on what to do in the next version of a
product. Sadly, in an effort to become "customer-focused" many people forget
this fact.

------
donkeyd
I just want a car with OTA updates that is affordable (a.k.a. not Tesla). My
current car has a bug where the crash mitigation system always gets triggered
at a specific spot with white lines on the road. I can easily reproduce the
issue, so the car maker should be able to fix it. This is, however, never
going to happen.

People get angry when a $700 phone isn't being maintained 2,5 years after
they're released. But we all accept that a $30,000 won't get updates as soon
as you drive out the dealership. (Well, except for maps, which are often paid
and at lease half a year behind.)

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btbuildem
I've been working in the UX realm for a while now. I've refined my
understanding of this (paradoxical?) problem as such: Listen to the customers,
hear out what features they want. Learn how they use the existing features.
Observe your competitors, and how their products are used. Understand the
general "spirit" underlying the specifics. Design and implement a feature set
that best satisfies the spirit, and touches upon some of the specific
requests.

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largote
KIA/Hyundai have asked customers what they want for a couple years now and
their cars are some of the best in their respective segments.

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dwyerm
I'm just surprised that anyone can have this discussion without mentioning the
Pontiac Aztek, which allegedly was designed to tick all the most-requested
feature boxes, but ended up being... the Aztek.

Or you end up in Zune territory where behind every joke punchline is a quiet
voice in the audience saying, "Yeah, but they're actually really good..."

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purplezooey
You know, this is good advice for a lot of enterprises today. We are too
focused on giving the customer exactly what they think they want vs. doing the
hard work of anticipating what they will want. A lot of PMs are guilty of
this. Like spending all your time flying around to meet with customers to chit
chat.

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southphillyman
I've seen this backfire twice at software firms. One instance involved 10+
contractors being added for a feature that was not yet approved or sold to a
client, when the green light was never given those contractors were let go.

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dre85
Getting manual transmission with all of the other bells and whistles is pretty
tough as well in North America. As soon as you want a package that isn't the
very basic, in comes the automatic.

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En_gr_Student
Steve Jobs would not approve of how auto makers do this, even though the
article pretends to quote his style. It actually doesn't and falls prey to the
one-at-a-time test problem.

~~~
chadgeidel
Bob Lutz is almost the Steve Jobs of the auto world. At least in his own mind.
:-)

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johnmarcus
idk, the 1967 thunderbird looks like poor execution. They completely changed
the look and feel of the car. Customers didn't say I want a larger car, higher
off the ground, + 4 seats. They just wanted the 4 seats. You need to make sure
you aren't changing the character and utility of a product while adding
features, because at that point, your really releasing a _new_ production, not
an improved one.

~~~
rootusrootus
That's pretty much what the article says, yes? They took opinions on specific
features, implemented them, and inadvertently moved the car into a different
niche ... one that had few customers. That's the whole point Lutz is making.

Of all the people in the automotive industry, the one I would most like to
shake hands with is Maximum Bob.

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RickJWag
Henry Ford once said "If I had built what people wanted, I'd have built them a
faster horse."

Smart man, Henry.

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throw7
If you've got something good, you want evolution.

If you've got something bad, you want revolution.

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X86BSD
This is exactly what jobs said too. On many occasions. And in different ways.
Skate to where the puck will be... people don’t know what they want until you
show them... etc.

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PeachPlum
"The customer is always right"

The irony of this is that phrase is actually the answer to "why isn't anyone
buy my stuff?", and the answer is "because they don't think it is good enough
value and the customer is always right".

Good marketing doesn't ask "what do you want" it asks "what problems do you
have".

The tale told about Ford is they old "they would have said they wanted faster
horses". And that's why Ford didn't have a market research department for a
hundred years. This, like many things Ford did (e.g. full vertical
integration), was poor a strategy.

