A while back (on another UX blog), I posted about how it’s not always good to listen to your web users. I just wanted to reiterate that concept here, since lately we, at Methink, have been getting projects where we need to actually ignore what users would traditionally want. Sometimes, when you’re developing web products or systems that redefine what users are customarily used to, user’s just do not have the capability or insight to provide developers with quality feedback to help build a better product.
For example, in the video below, Paul Buchheit (creator of Gmail and founder of FriendFeed), talks about the importance of listening to users, but ignoring them on certain occasions. He quotes Henry Ford, who once said “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Obviously, before the invention of cars, people would not have been equipped to give proper feedback on how to make cars better. Anyways, great video by Paul on how to listen to users.
