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Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

I always remember this phrase whenever this topic comes up. "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses" - Henry Ford.

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FWIW, I feel this quote is often misinterpreted -- too many people take it to mean "If my audience thinks I'm building the wrong thing that's ok -- I must hold my conviction and they'll thank me later". The reality is that any new product is a balance between building something familiar, fulfilling explicit customer desires, and improving in ways they didn't even expect. All of these are important. Maybe we can balance out the Henry Ford quote with this one from Peter Theil:

"No one can predict the future exactly, but we know two things: it's going to be different, and it must be rooted in today's world."

You may still be misinterpreting it (or, more likely, I am misinterpreting you!). The "faster horse" is exactly what the customer wants. It it is what you need to provide. The trouble is that people don't have the words to properly describe what they want (It doesn't yet exist. It cannot be fully described using existing language!), so you cannot take what they say literally. You have to really dig in and truly understand them and what they are trying to say.

I think I more or less agree with you. But I feel the quote itself is often misinterpreted to mean “I can ignore my users’ concerns, because I know better”.

True enough. Ironic that a quote that is trying to basically say "Don't read into things literally, understand what is actually being said" is oft taken only literally.

Not to be pedantic, but there isn’t any evidence he ever actually said that. It’s also used as justification for all sorts of bad business decisions that could have been solved with a tiny bit of research first.

Allegedly he did say “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own”, though.

Which says the exact same thing. You can't just ask someone. You have to understand them.

> "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses" - Henry Ford

Except that's exactly what people wanted.

Humans settled for combustion engines with all the attendant downsides because it is not possible make a faster horse (or human).

A stable-less horse, maybe. The reduced maintenance requirements is the car's primary appeal.

But you are right that a faster horse is exactly what they wanted – just not literally. The words they had to describe what they actually wanted hadn't been invented yet, so they had to fumble around with what was at their disposal.

Which, of course, is the point of the quote: Don't take what people say at face value. Understand what they actually mean.

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