Food for thought about "The User"

This post by Wayne Bivens-Tatum at Academic Librarian gave me pause.

We spend a lot of time thinking about implementing various Web 2.0 technologies in the hope that we might better interact with the user. But what if we're ahead of the user, technologically-speaking?

It's both an interesting question and a reality check.

Are we assuming that we know what users want, or are we meeting their needs?

Are we catering to people on the bleeding edge while leaving late adopters out in the cold?

Are we adopting technology for the "ooh! shiny!" factor, or are we making conscientious choices on the technologies that we implement and teach in our libraries?

There are lots of way to figure out if we're "doing right" by our users. The simplest one is just to ask.

So ask. Touch base with your users and make sure that you're giving them what they want rather than what you think they need.