Vision and discovery

Some thoughts on how to balance the two. Emphasis on the word balance. You never go full-vision or full-discovery. You need both.

Even Henry Ford understood the underlying human motivations when he commented “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” He knew people wanted to get from A to B faster, but they couldn’t have envisioned the automobile as the solution.

Likewise, it’s impractical to validate every single design decision by talking to your users. If you take a discovery-centered approach—which I usually prefer—you still need to anticipate their future needs, not just their current ones.