Great products solve real human problems. That means the best idea-generating input is new insight about user needs.

A need is a subjective feeling of something missing—often hard to articulate. To understand needs, you have to talk to people. That’s what qualitative researchers do. Let’s say you’ve talked to 20 customers. How do you spot the real insight in all that data?

Claude Shannon (the father of information theory) said: “The amount of information in a message is proportional to how surprising it is”.

Imagine you’ve never seen a duck. You meet one and it says “quack.” You’re surprised—that’s new info: ducks quack. It says “quack” again—now you’re not surprised. The second quack adds no value. Duck as a source of information is exhausted.

Talking to customers → Surprise → Ideas

Sure, colleagues and friends can help you think. But their knowledge of your users is limited—just like yours. You’ll stop being surprised by them too. To keep evolving your product, talk to people who actually need it. Pay attention to what surprises you—that marks the arrival of new, useful information.

Next: Surprise Should Be Within Reach

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Exploratory Research Playbook | yasna.ai

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