Right. Don't immediately follow their very strongly worded suggestion for feature X, ask instead what problem Y they are attempting to get solved. Then use this this as one input out of many.
But surely this is old news to any prospective PM?
But surely this is old news to any prospective PM?
Re explicitly following directions from users being a bad idea, Janna Bastow (of Mind The Product) says as much in her section of the article.
I think it's still important to gather feedback though—it's not the answer, but it can point you towards the right question.
I think, in broad strokes, the opinions are always going to be the same—i.e. get user feedback and do usability testing. But the nuances in how each person does those two things (and various methodologies applied) is where we can learn from each other.