Asking is good but you often get a lot of wrong information that way. As well as very selective information. When I was working on a reimplementation of an exi

Asking is good but you often get a lot of wrong information that way. As well as very selective information. When I was working on a reimplementation of an existing web app I had several team members watch how users were using the application. A mixture of sitting next to them and quietly watching (not interrupting their workflow) and remote watching via shared desktop (which we also recorded to refer to later). Watching (in person and remotely) was without question more valuable. We could go back and replay what they were doing and why (we had copies of the worksheet they were working from for each use). Without it we wouldn't have delivered about 30% of what they were looking for and would have had to redo a load of work compared to if we had just gone by how they said they were using the system. The new system rolled out and we had a total of two post-launch changes to make. Both of which were very simple changes. So don't just ask but watch how the users who use the system actually use it.