People don't always know what they want. People have trouble seeing which of their needs can be feasibly addressed. People are bad at imagining how new ideas in

People don't always know what they want. People have trouble seeing which of their needs can be feasibly addressed. People are bad at imagining how new ideas integrate with their established way of doing things. If, 10 years ago, you'd asked every current smartphone user whether they needed a multi-hundred dollar phone that does mostly the same things as their laptop, the vast majority would say no. Hackers don't always know what people want. Hackers, having hammers, will only see the bits of problems that look most like a nail. Hackers, having hammers, will forget that other people don't like to deal with hammers. Hackers, having hammers, say things like: "For a Linux user, you can already build [Dropbox] yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224) The real lesson is to integrate users in every part of development. Targeting a specific user group? Talk with them, try out products they use, and try to grok their needs, values, and relationship with technology. Trying an innovative interface? Throw together a minimal, flexible mockup (just enough to facilitate a conversation), and find out how people react. Whether you should start with users depends highly on the product, but get users involved throughout the design process when user input is needed.