Get Feedback and Take It Seriously

You should actively try to get the best feedback you can. Try to talk to real users. Talk to your technical support team, and ask them to create a list of the most common problems and complaints. You can get feedback from other sources, such as user requests, newsgroups, and user surveys. If the feedback doesn't make sense, assume that either you don't fully understand it or that the person has trouble expressing his ideas. Don't be afraid to ask questions or discuss alternative approaches.

Take the feedback seriously and look for patterns. One user complaining about a feature doesn't necessarily imply that the feature is flawed. Research has shown that there is a 97 percent chance that at least one user will complain about every feature in a program, no matter how good it is. (Just kidding—there is no such research, but it is probably true.) But receiving several complaints about a feature is a clear sign of a problem. If you think a task is easy to do, yet users find it difficult, they are right and you are wrong. Always. Don't dismiss this feedback or try to defend the feature—just fix it.