Focus groups and informal feedback offer a trap: Asking someone in the target audience if they like something might get you useful feedback.

But most of the time, the people you’re asking aren’t actually in the group of early adopters that are going to make your rollout work. They’re not the people who buy work from artists before they’re famous, or wait in line to get an iPhone on the first day. They’re part of the crowd, not the lonely early adopters.

And people who are part of the crowd generally don’t have a lot of empathy for the nerds who go first. Since they have trouble imagining what drives those folks, they’re going to do a terrible job of giving you feedback.

“I don’t like this (yet),” is not the same as “the people you hope to serve won’t like this.”

You don’t have to be a toddler to work at Fisher-Price. Professionals work hard to imagine what others might want. But your friends and neighbors might not have put in the work needed to have this professional skill.