Why do we ask does it work? let's be honest, we don't want to know "does it work" we want to know "will it work for me, to do what I want it to do?"
When someone goes to buy a used car, the first question is usually "does it run?" or "does it work?". When I buy a car, what I want to know is "will it work tomorrow?" and will it work on Friday, and will it break down when I get to Quebec and strand me in -30 weather in a province where all mechanics speak french, and I don't?
So, Why don't we ask the questions we care about?
Have we been trained by too many engineers or car salesmen that answered "I don't know if it will work tomorrow. The world might end at midnight tonight for all I know!" Is it because we inherited from our great great grandparents the thought that we are buying a horse, and it's been trained to do certain things, so a valid question is "does it know how to pull a cart?" Is it because we are unaware of our real desires and can't articulate what is actually important?
I propose that we start asking the questions that we actually care about. Questions like "Will it work for me?", "will it work for customer XYZ who uses Windows 2008", "will it run tomorrow? How do you know?"
-Joseph-
2 comments:
So the problem is in the way the question is being asked?
How do we teach people to ask these questions? From your examples it seems to me that their is an increasing level of specificity.
Maybe that's the way forward?
I think your takeaway is valid. More specific questions are likely to get more precise answers.
I was trying to point out that the people asking the questions are building equivalence classes in their head. However, from my point of view the questions "does it run" and "will it run tomorrow" are not equivalent.
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