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When testing leap-of-faith assumptions, it's tempting to ask customers directly what they want, either through individual customer interviews, a focus group, or a survey. Many of us were taught to do this kind of market research. But there's a problem with this approach: people often think they know what they want, but it turns out that they're wrong.1 That's why the College Scorecard team went out to the Washington Mall not with a survey but with a prototype product. They could observe what customers actually did with it. The reason to run experiments is to discover customers' revealed preferences through their behavior. In other words, don't ask customers what they want. Design experiments that allow you to observe it.