Killer Innovations: reblog

Imagine you want to get to know someone and you can ask only five questions. What would you ask? What would you most want to know? Obviously it depends on the context--you'd ask different questions of someone you're dating vs. a job interviewee vs. a customer vs. someone your daughter is dating. But I wonder, should the questions we ask our users be that different from the ones we'd ask our dates?

Think of all those surveys you've taken. If you're signing up for a conference, magazine, or online news site, you usually get things like:

1) What do you do for a living? [Choose an industry and job title]
2) How big is your budget?
4) What are your purchasing plans for [whatever the domain is, with timeframes]
3) Are you "the decider"?

In other words, "How useful are you to our advertisers and sponsors?" Those surveys say to me, "The only thing we care about is how much you can buy."

If it's a customer survey, you often get things like:

1) How old are you?
2) What gender are you?
3) How old are your kids?
4) What's your total household income?
5) Do you own or rent your home?

In other words, "The only thing we care about is selling more things to you and other people who fit your demographics."

Those questions tell you little about me as a person. If we want passionate users, shouldn't we care about what they care about? Obviously there are personal questions that might not be appropriate for customers, but most of us here are trying to have a more personal connection with users, and that means doing more to get to know them as individual people.

By now, you've probably seen the "Five Things You Probably Don't Know About Me" meme floating around, which I've enjoyed reading. And several wonderful bloggers have tagged me for this including:

Joe McCarthy

passionate analyst Dylan Lewis

Cool Cat Teacher (aka Vicki Davis)

Tamar Weinberg

Passionate Communicator Lee Hopkins

and the must-must-must read creativity guy Roger von Oech

Well, I'm much more interested in knowing something about you--our wonderful readers we learn so much from. So, I'm asking you for a huge favor--to answer some or all of the following five questions here in comments--or on your own blog (please let us know). Which brings me back to the start of this post, which five questions should I ask? Normally my first question would be, "Which books do you wish others would read?", but fortunately I've already asked y'all that and got a fantastic reading list. But, here are the other five(ish) things I'd love to know:

0) What's your name and website URL? (optional, of course)

1) What's the most fun work you've ever done, and why? (two sentences max)

2) A. Name one thing you did in the past that you no longer do but wish you did? (one sentence max)

B. Name one thing you've always wanted to do but keep putting it off? (one sentence max)

3) A. What two things would you most like to learn or be better at, and why? (two sentences max)

B. If you could take a class/workshop/apprentice from anyone in the world living or dead, who would it be and what would you hope to learn? (two more sentences, max)

4) A. What three words might your best friends or family use to describe you?

B. Now list two more words you wish described you...

5) What are your top three passions? (can be current or past, work, hobbies, or causes-- three sentences max)

6) (sue me) Write--and answer--one more question that YOU would ask someone (with answer in three sentences max)

[Bonus: What is one question you wish people would ask themselves