I am Douglas Tarlow

Yesterday I came across this Henry Ford quote:

“If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.”

I liked the quote, and posted it to my twitter account. One of the responses really intrigued me, and surprisingly it was from someone I’d met at the d.school, a very talented masters CS student.

He said, “going against design thinking huh!”.

I think this quote is really at the heart of a paradox of design and innovation.

The “ethnographic” portion of designing, that is, what many in business think of as “user research” is a nuanced skill. Its easy to walk up to a customer, and ask them, “Would you pay $20 for new product xyz?”

But the key to good ethnographic study while simple, is extraordinarily difficult. You must clear yourself of assumptions, of your own personal opinions, and truly immerse yourself in the culture of your subject. I like to think of it as being a cultural chameleon, you blend in, imagine doing as they do, then write down questions to think about later. Its about finding disconnections, “Subject A claims to make decisions based upon the goodness of a company, but still loves product XY”. Why!? Its about finding core values, “what are the make or break values?” And most importantly, its about getting close enough to a subject, that when you’re thinking about product development later down the road, that you can gain the ability to say, “sure, but ‘subject B’ wouldn’t use that”.

I think the paradox boils down to this: very little is black and white, there are always multiple factors, multiple reasons, and multiple beliefs, which all merge into an interplay to make decisions. You can’t just walk up to a person and ask them why they just did/bought/ate something. The number of motivating factors is far to great, and there is also a fair bit of randomness in many of our own decisions.

I challenge you to: walk a day in your own life, and periodically stop after completing some task, and ask yourself, why did you just do that? Why did you hold the door open for the lady behind you at the grocery store? Why did you donate $1 to MDA at Safeway? Why did you buy a new brand of soap? Why did you buy that book? Why didn’t you like the presentation from today’s meeting?

Is there really one clear and easy answer to any of those questions? Perhaps to some, but I’m calling you a liar, no matter who you are, if you claim that every action you take in a day is dictated by a clear and continuous logic.

This isn’t a bad thing however, because there are many ways to get at the heart of what people care about, without directly asking them. And in my mind, one of the things that really sets apart expert ethnographers (or needfinders, if you prefer), is their ability to indirectly ask questions to build the bigger picture. And key to this skills is the ability to distance yourself. You must distance your own culture, motivations, choices, and beliefs from that of the person you’re studying. Later, when you’re analyzing your findings, then it becomes ok to introduce your own culture back in, because inevitably, we as humans are huge relativists, and we cannot honestly hope to eliminate all aspects of our own beliefs from our understanding of others.

So, what was Henry Ford really saying? Well, its a great insight, that as a skilled technician, his ability and knowledge in a specific domain, far outweighed the general publics, when it came to predicting technological capabilities. Had he asked someone what they wanted in a new vehicle (the simple and ineffective direct question), they would likely have said “A faster horse”. But had he gone out and studied the lives of his future customers, he could have developed a great deal of insights into their tastes, values and beliefs, that he could then leverage when making difficult decisions in product development.

Thanks for reading, as always, your thoughts, comments and feedback are welcome. doug.tarlow+tumblr@gmail.com