[maptime]

Agree, never ask a user what they want

But you can't go wrong with talking to users to understand the problems they are dealing with

[bombcar]

I've heard "The Mom Test" is a good book around that, but I've never read it.

https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/...

[srcreigh]

It’s great. It strongly warns against ego pitching, aka talking about your fancy solution, which only prompts people to say “That’s great” so you go away.

The whole book is basically how to get useful information by being curious about the potential customer, how to decode “That’s great” by asking for commitments/intros/money, and also a bit about how to know whether you’re talking to the right person in the first place.

[spiffytech]

Deploy Empathy is another great book on this. Think of it as the 102 course to The Mom Test's 101.