Gathering indirect feedback

A well-known saying in software development is that users do not know what they want. While this may sound harsh, there are a few reasons why direct user feedback from discussions, interviews, and focus groups does not necessarily lead to good product feedback:

• One reason for this is that everyone wants to be liked. When conducting an interview, or talking to a group of users, there is a chance that they will only say what they believe the interviewer wants to hear.
• It has a high turnaround time. Scheduling interviews and focus groups takes time, and finding a time that everyone can attend can easily take days or even weeks.
• It is hard to keep asking the same group of users for feedback every few weeks. This is especially important when trying to determine whether the quality of a feature is improving with the newest updates or not.

For these reasons, it can be worthwhile to cut back on asking for feedback, but instead, measure how...