Customer interviews when nobody's used your kind of thing yet

Jeff Gothelf has a post about a customer interview technique that sounds a little counterintuitive at first: instead of asking people what they want, you ask them to walk through a scenario they've never actually experienced and watch what they do.

The trick is in the framing. You don't show them a product. You don't describe a feature. You set up a situation — a problem they'll actually face — and ask them to live it. Then you listen. The responses are real because the moment is real. No hypotheticals, no "I would probably." Just what they do when it's their turn.

This is worth reading because it breaks the habit most founders have of asking the wrong questions. The usual interview asks for opinions about a thing that doesn't exist yet. People give opinions. They're polite, they're helpful, and they're often wrong. The scenario method skips the opinion layer entirely. You get behavior, not self-report.

Why this matters for us: when we're building tools for communities nobody has built for before, the usual market research lies to us. This technique cuts through the noise.