I was recently reading a post about how some Product Managers skip customer interviews.(I’ll set aside the issue that this step is being skipped, as real-world feedback after launch tends to humble that approach.) The post focused on starting with a few strong questions during customer interviews to identify the unknown, validate real issues, and understand associated costs to help prioritize them.

That all makes sense and is generally good advice. But I found myself thinking there was one piece missing from the conversation.

There’s a concept from Lean called “going to the gemba.” The oversimplified version is going to where the work actually happens and seeing it for yourself. When I think about user interviews, it comes down to adding one simple question:

“Can you show me?”

User descriptions can be notoriously mistranslated. People explain what they think is happening, or what they believe is important, and a lot gets lost in translation. Watching the work in action tends to remove that gap pretty quickly.

I saw this years ago working on software used in operating rooms. At the time, everything we built across the hospital’s ecosystem followed the same pattern: clean white interfaces across the entire product suite for consistency, simplicity, and ease of use.

But we kept getting signals that OR users didn’t like the UI, without much detail. It started to impact our ability to engage beta customers and have meaningful conversations about adoption in places where we already had a foothold.

So we went to the gemba and observed.

It turns out, operating rooms are dark environments. People are very intentional about what they focus on and how they see the procedure. Keyboards are covered for sterility and not easy to use, and the entire space is optimized around controlled and directed lighting.

In that context, a bright interface wasn’t just inconvenient, it didn’t fit the environment at all. It created a glow that disrupted the entire room.

That observation changed the direction of the design quickly. We shifted toward simpler interactions and dark-themed interfaces that worked with the environment instead of against it. It was something we wouldn’t have fully understood just by asking questions, as this clinical context was very different from the others our solutions had been optimized for.

What people say only goes so far, but you can uncover a lot by watching the work directly.

Go to the gemba.