Along the same lines, Donald Norman (usability guru, started the usability field almost single-handedly with the book "The Design of Everyday Things") recently said:
"I've come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs."
http://jnd.org/dn.mss/technology_first_needs_last.html
You can't ignore customers completely. Apple discovered this with the Lisa computer in the 1980s, which apparently was amazing for its time, but at $10,000 found no market. Perhaps Lisa was the computer Jobs wanted for himself, but it turned out that few others were willing to shell out that kind of money.
On the other hand, it is clearly pointless to ask consumers how to design attractive or revolutionary hardware or software - you're the expert, you figure it out.
But this doesn't necessarily mean that you ignore target markets altogether - the iPad is innovative, but still clearly focused on a particular set of use cases with a price to make it competitive with netbooks.
"I've come to a disconcerting conclusion: design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs." http://jnd.org/dn.mss/technology_first_needs_last.html
You can't ignore customers completely. Apple discovered this with the Lisa computer in the 1980s, which apparently was amazing for its time, but at $10,000 found no market. Perhaps Lisa was the computer Jobs wanted for himself, but it turned out that few others were willing to shell out that kind of money.
On the other hand, it is clearly pointless to ask consumers how to design attractive or revolutionary hardware or software - you're the expert, you figure it out.
But this doesn't necessarily mean that you ignore target markets altogether - the iPad is innovative, but still clearly focused on a particular set of use cases with a price to make it competitive with netbooks.