Do not ask this question when validating a product

When talking with potential customers to validate your product, there is one question you should never ask.

“What do you think of (your solution)?”

What’s wrong with this approach?

You are presenting a solution to an artificial problem.

You are not discovering what problems your potential customers actually have. Instead you are focusing their mind onto the solution you have already presented.

Your not getting the feedback you need.

What you need during the validation stage is feedback on customer problems. They may or may not be problems your considering solving. What feedback does is it presents evidence that you can then distill into a solution.

They will be focused on the details of the solution you presented even if it does not fit what they are looking for at all.