Because the team was told “build a tracker” by their stakeholder, “users want a tracker” became the animating principle behind the team’s efforts. Other mandates you’ve likely seen pop up in the news include “users want a chatbot,” “users want a dashboard” or “users want a subscription to their mouse.”

Fundamentally, the question all these teams are asking is not “what needs do our customers have?” but “What features is this product missing?”

The road to the Build Trap is paved with product problems
The build trap is when organizations focus more on shipping and developing features rather than on the actual value those things produce. — Melissa Perri, Escaping the Build Trap

This was hardly the only time that a customer’s first stab at a problem statement ended up defining a product problem. In fact, the majority of initial problem statements I see are some twist on “we want to add this feature, can you help us define it.”

They say that good designers fall in love with problems, not with solutions. I tend to agree, and the first thing I always ask new customers to do is describe the problem they are facing.

A couple of years back, a customer came to me with a request: “Our CEO tried to use our product. His transaction didn’t go through and he couldn’t see its status. So customers being able to track their transaction is a priority problem that we need to solve.”

I’m sure you’ve already spotted the snag: the problem in their statement was “users don’t have this tool.”

In other words, it was a solution statement in disguise.

This makes sense because of how these teams are typically organized — not as true product teams, but as project teams. They are given an output goal and only make decisions within the bounds of that output. Since decisions about the form factor are typically made for them by executive stakeholders — like that customer’s CEO — they skip right to the form factor.

But we couldn’t convince the customer’s CEO to change it. He “fell in love” with the problem of not having a tracker. After two years of bashing away at the problem without moving the metrics, the customer’s team realized what we had told them in the first week: that they were trying to solve a product problem rather than a customer problem.

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” — Albert Einstein

The mind is just like a muscle — the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets and the more it can expand.” — Idowu Koyenikan
Strengthening Quotes About Mindset

Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right. — Henry Ford

Fixed mindset makes you concerned with how you’ll be judged; the growth mindset makes you concerned with improving.” — Carol S. Dweck

Your calm mind is the ultimate weapon against your challenges.” — Bryant McGill