Customers Request Solutions. We Need to Understand Their Problems.

UX Strategy with Jared Spool, a Center Centre — UIE newsletter focused on bringing UX to a strategic level inside your organization.

“They need a way to export data.” That’s what the salesperson told the product manager. “It’s a big sale. We’ll lose it if we don’t put a data export feature in.”

On the surface, it sounds like a reasonable request. But there’s a complication.

The team can’t do a great job with the information they have. They could implement a data export feature in several different ways — each very different. If the designers just guess what the customer wants, it’s very likely they’ll build the wrong functionality. That would be a costly mistake.

The salesman came to the meeting with a customer’s solution. To be successful, the team needs to understand the problem behind that solution.

Human nature kicks in.

It’s human nature to start with a solution. When any of us walk into a store, we bring with us a shopping list of solutions. Not the problems we want to solve.

Starting with a solution is a concise way to communicate what we think we need. It’s expedient, but it leaves out important information.