Moving the button around the screen is the kind of thing that will drive you to a local optimum and dump you there, with no sense of purpose or direction to a b

Moving the button around the screen is the kind of thing that will drive you to a local optimum and dump you there, with no sense of purpose or direction to a better place. Direct user feedback shakes you out of that dead-end, and towards a newer, much better dead-end on the path to success. Maybe the button is solving the wrong problem, but users latch onto it as the first thing that comes to mind. You can't find that out unless you interrogate your customers, and most engineers wouldn't do it unless their back is against the wall. Happened to me last week - spent an hour on the phone+hangouts with a customer, and it turned out they needed something other than what they asked (and we didn't have). Happens all the time. [BIG-CO] employees are just talking to each other, and then A/B testing their way to success along the nearest promotion-worthy metric. The courage, or the necessity, to overcome the aversion of the users is a competitive advantage for a small company. EDIT: want to add that I am enjoying our conversation here, thanks for joining.