Your time is too valuable to spend it creating things people don’t want. As counterintuitive as it may seem, talking to people can save you months or years of frustrating, fruitless effort. You might be afraid that talking to customers (or potential customers) will be a waste of time. That they will only tell you things you already know. Or, worse, that it will be awkward and you’ll accidentally offend people. 

That’s okay. But you also might be looking for new opportunities. You might be wondering why people cancel. You might be wondering how to get more people to buy. You might be trying to figure out which features to add next. And your data may not be giving you clear answers.

— Deploy Empathy, Michele Hansen