Beware the survey of the thing they haven't experienced yet

People are notoriously bad at telling you what they want when they haven't yet experienced the thing you think they might like. Apple's Steve Jobs is always banging on about it. It's summed up as 'people don't know what they want.'

Which always sounds, well, insulting and patronising. (image courtesy amydeanne)

This (from December 2007) illustrates the point:

"Am I missing something? The headlines (Consumers Prefer GPS over Mobile Internet/GPS edges out internet as desired mobile feature - study) tell us US mobile phone users would rather have a GPS-enabled phone than a mobile-internet enabled one.

Translation: I'd rather have a sat-nav than be a live, real-time connected node on the network.
What kind of questions resulted in that?
Q"Would you like to know where you are? Or would you like to know any and everything?"
A"Oh, I'll take where I am thanks."
Uh?

But people are exceptionally good at shaping a concept to fit their fitness landscape. In fact, they always place a higher value on something they have had input in creating (which brings oodles of peer-to-peer marketing value).

In order to engage them you have to provide the 'thing' to talk about. That becomes the social object; an integral part of the platform-thinking approach. (discover/bring together/surface/work together to fix).

Give them something that interests them, that engages them. Then they'll help shape it. And if you can give them something to experience - then the 'survey' of their feedback will be all the more effective.

That thing could be a workshop in an interesting location, with physical interaction and decisions made, or a beta site with direct links to the developers, or prototypes to add to and delete from, or....

As long as it's something around which discussion-leading-to-change can happen, the social object will be doing its job. And the discussion is key - the process must be social not silo'd.

Rather know where you are... or everything?

Am I missing something? The headlines (Consumers Prefer GPS over Mobile Internet/GPS edges out internet as desired mobile feature - study) tell us US mobile phone users would rather have a GPS-enabled phone than a mobile-internet enabled one.

Translation: I'd rather have a sat-nav than be a live, real-time connected node on the network.

What kind of questions resulted in that?
Q"Would you like to know where you are? Or would you like to know any and everything?"
A"Oh, I'll take where I am thanks."
Uh?

Knowing where you are and where you're headed is all very nice - but it's so much more useful if you can check in with the human race for a bit of help and advice about what's around you as you go.

So, in my view, those headlines are red-herrings. My guess is what people actually want is connection and if you can also hand them a map, they'll thank you for it.

Mobile Internet WITH geolocation is clearly a powerful proposition, but if I have to take one or the other, I'll take mobile internet every single time.