Maire Cleary

Ford famously said, "If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said faster horses." This conundrum - wanting to understand your customers' problems but not being able to rely on them to tell you - is still true today and is rooted in how humans naturally think. Look at the picture above. On first glance many see a yellow smilie face. You may need to look again before you describe black dots strategically placed on a yellow background. (The Gestalt psychology theory is: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.) This is because humans like to interpret and give meaning to what they experience.…

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