Faster horses and tone-deaf designers

> If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse – Henry Ford (allegedly)

This quote has always bothered me. Not only is it dismissive of customer input, but I’ve seen it misused terribly by a wide range of people, who cite it as an excuse to ignore other people and design whatever they want. So it was with great delight that I found [this marvelous debunking of the “quote”](http://blogs.hbr.org/2011/08/henry-ford-never-said-the-fast/) and the philosophy behind it.

> Let me dispel with the suspense; it doesn’t appear that Henry Ford ever actually uttered this famous and polarizing phrase. We have no evidence that Ford ever said those words…

> However, even if Ford didn’t verbalize his thoughts on customers’ ostensible inability to communicate their unmet needs for innovative products — history indicates that Henry Ford most certainly did think along those lines — his tone-deafness to customers’ needs (explicit or implicit), had a very costly and negative impact on the Ford Motor Company’s investors, employees, and customers.