Users own the present. You own the future.
The article discusses how user research often fails by focusing on surface-level wants rather than underlying needs, especially when dealing with high-level executives trained to provide quick, confident answers. It argues that treating user suggestions as definitive solutions can lead to misguided product development, likening such outcomes to 'faster horses' instead of innovative solutions. True insight comes from uncovering the deeper needs behind user behavior, which requires resisting the allure of clear but potentially misleading feedback.
- ▪Users, especially executives, often provide solution-oriented feedback based on a lifetime of being expected to have answers.
- ▪The difference between a user's 'want' and their actual 'need' is critical; for example, wanting ice cream may really be about cooling down or saving money.
- ▪Asking the wrong questions in research leads to confident but incorrect direction, particularly when dealing with highly articulate and experienced users.
- ▪Product teams that rely solely on metrics like logins may misinterpret engagement if they don't align with users' real-life contexts.
- ▪Effective research must dig beyond articulated wants to uncover broader needs, opening up more innovative and appropriate solution spaces.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Users own the present. You own the future. 22 April 2026 A few years ago I sat in a research session at Moonfare. Since private equity is a premium product, our clients are mostly C-level executives, founders or people who have spent decades being the person in the room with the answer. He was one of them. I asked him about a part of the platform. Within a minute he was telling me, in precise detail, exactly what we should build next. He had a roadmap. He had the rationale. He had the feature list. well, he was wrong. Not because he was stupid. He was one of the sharpest people I’d spoken to that month. He was wrong because he’d been asked the wrong question, and his instinct, trained by a lifetime of being the person who brings the answer, was to give me one.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at dir14.
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