Henry Ford's horse problem wasn't about imagination

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
- Henry Ford (allegedly)

This quote gets thrown around constantly—usually by someone who wants to justify ignoring user research entirely. The logic goes: users don’t know what they want, so why bother asking them?

The problem isn’t the sentiment. It’s that people are using it to defend bad research, not to avoid research altogether.

Here’s the thing: Henry Ford’s mistake wasn’t talking to users. It was asking the wrong question.

The real problem with “faster horses”

Let’s assume Ford actually said this (there’s no evidence he did, but let’s run with it). The issue isn’t that people asked for faster horses. It’s that “What do you want?” is a terrible research question.

Of course they said faster horses. That’s the only frame of reference they had. But if Ford had dug deeper—if he’d asked about their actual problems instead of solutions—he would’ve heard something very different.

Imagine if he’d asked:

• What’s frustrating about traveling with your horse?
• Tell me about the last time you needed to go somewhere far away.
• What stops you from traveling more often?
• How does weather affect your trips?

Suddenly you’re not hearing “faster horses.” You’re hearing:

• “I can’t take my whole family without a carriage”
• “Long rides leave me sore for days”
• “I get soaked when it rains”
• “My horse gets tired and needs rest”
• “Feeding and caring for a horse is expensive”

None of these answers mention cars. But every single one of them points directly to what a car solves.

Good research doesn’t ask for solutions

The mistake most people make—and the one this quote reinforces—is thinking user research means asking users what to build.

It doesn’t.

Good research uncovers problems. It reveals pain points. It helps you understand what people are actually struggling with in their daily lives. What they’re working around. What they’ve given up on entirely.

Users aren’t supposed to design your product. That’s your job. But they’re the only ones who can tell you what’s actually broken in their world.

When you focus on understanding problems instead of collecting feature requests, you stop getting “faster horses” and start hearing real needs.

Why this matters more now than ever

Here’s the irony: the same people who quote Henry Ford to avoid user research are now using AI to build products faster than ever.

Which means they’re building the wrong things faster than ever. The market is flooded with functional products that solve problems nobody has.

Henry Ford couldn’t build a car in a weekend. You can build a working app in hours with AI. The barrier to building dropped to zero. The barrier to understanding what people actually need? That stayed exactly the same. Which makes user research the only competitive advantage that matters.

How to actually understand your users

I’ve written before about stakeholder interviews and the same principles apply to user research:

Ask about the past, not the future. “Tell me about the last time you struggled with X” beats “What features would you want?” every time.

Focus on behavior, not opinions. What people actually do matters more than what they say they’d do. Watch for workarounds—they reveal unmet needs.

Dig into the why. When someone mentions a problem, ask why it matters. Then ask why again. The first answer is usually surface-level. The third or fourth answer is where the real insight lives.

Listen for emotion. When someone’s voice changes—frustration, relief, resignation—you’ve hit something that actually matters to them.

None of this requires a PhD. It just requires showing up with curiosity instead of assumptions.

The bottom line

The Henry Ford quote isn’t wrong because users can’t imagine solutions. It’s wrong because it defends lazy research.

Great products don’t come from avoiding users—they come from understanding them deeply. Not asking what they want, but understanding what they struggle with. What they’re working around. What they’ve accepted as “just the way it is.”

That’s how you build something people actually need instead of just another faster horse.