Ways to find what people actually want

Before 1901, Ohio State had a grassy field between their library and University Hall. No paths laid down yet. Students walked to class anyway, carving routes through the grass as they went. Over time those worn trails became permanent, and eventually the university paved them. The geometric pattern they form is still there today, defining The Oval at the center of campus.

Product builders do something similar when they make tools flexible enough that people can bend them in unexpected ways. Boris Cherny at Anthropic calls this finding latent demand. You build something hackable and open-ended, then watch how people abuse it for cases you never designed for. Those unintended uses show you what people actually want. That’s apparently how Claude Code gets built. They watch what people hack together, then build features to support those patterns.

Both approaches are trusting the same thing. That observation beats assumption. That the people using something will show you what they need if you give them room to move and then pay attention to where they go.

The impact is remarkably similar too. You end up building what people actually need instead of what you thought they needed. The paths get laid where people already walk. The features get built where people are already working.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​