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.