I’ve also been writing about the importance of using Gerald Zaltman’s techniques in combination with Anthony Ulwick’s — in fact as 2 of my first blog posts ever:
- http://clearaction.biz/blog/cem-metaphors/
- http://clearaction.biz/blog/innovating-the-customer-experience/
- http://clearaction.biz/blog/measure-customer-value-the-customers-way/

My favorite quote from Ulwick:
“It’s easy to portray customers as emotional, illogical individuals who are incapable of knowing or communicating what they want. This is a convenient way to avoid taking actions that are inconsistent with one’s own thinking, intuition and personal motivations.”

I hope more customer experience managers will seek out their branding and advertising departments and their R&D departments to get their hands on whatever metaphor research and jobs-to-be-done research that exists in their company, and use it to re-center their CEM strategy — and if it doesn’t exist, insist that these departments adopt it so they’ll be on the mark with designing solutions and communications that maximize relevance and resonance to customers … best path to excellent customer experience.

For Ford, most would never imagined going from the horse to this box like thing with four wheels and goes by itself. But they could have said “I need to get from point A to Point B faster than I do right now and with these hassles”. In the case of the iPod, people were never going to say (at that time), I could really use a device that can hold every piece of music I own with a thing called ‘playlists’ that get me out of making all of these mixed taped!

In both cases, they saw needs whether voiced or not, and innovated the solution that was far superior to the current day solution. Time spent understanding the user needs and the current “outcomes” people go for by using a product is at its essence one of the best ways of finding that faster horse!

I totally agree with your point about “latent needs”. The use of deep metaphors and workable wondering in Zaltman’s ZMET research strategy is an excellent way to reveal the customer’s JTBD. I offered some thoughts on the topic in a post called “Deep Metaphor: Exploring the Say-Mean Gap in Design Research”

http://skilfulminds.com/2008/12/01/deep-metaphor-exploring-the-say-mean-gap-in-design-research/

3-D printers have fascinated me every since I first heard of them. And I agree there are numerous use-cases where these devices can provide value to what people need to get done.