I’ve spent a number of years in industry, and in that time have been involved with a number of projects that revolved around asking the ‘customer’ what they need, only to find out once the project was delivered, that they didn’t use what they said they needed!

Now I’ve also seen numerous examples of where build it and they will come have also failed to deliver, maybe because not enough time was given to the change in habit to get people to adapt to the new ‘thing’ or, it just simply completely missed what the customer needs actually were.

So I now subscribe to the following approach to delivering new concepts:

1. Trust – Don’t ask! Conceive the idea then sense check with people you respect and trust
2. Flexibility – Choose a platform/approach that is flexible and adaptable
3. Speed – Deliver the concept quickly. Go live with the minimum amount of content
4. Iterate – Talk to a small group of your customers to direct further iterations
5. Refresh – Flush the concept annually to ensure freshness to the approach