> If a customer screams for Widget X, a company might try building a Widget X prototype, and discover it doesn't work so well in practice. _This._ It's a less

> If a customer screams for Widget X, a company might try building a Widget X prototype, and discover it doesn't work so well in practice. _This._ It's a lesson I learned early on in my developer career: when customers ask for Widget X, it's often a symptom of an underlying problem that customers are trying to solve. Your role as a product developer is to understand the customer's underlying problem. Discover what the problem is, and you might discover that they don't need a Widget X; maybe they need a Feature X or a Gadget X. Maybe it reveals holes in your training processes. Maybe they just revealed a seemingly trivial bug with existing stuff. Or maybe you realise you never understood why clients ever used your product until now.