Whenever possible, have an engineer or two and a UX designer join you for these meetings. Engineers are great at solving problems. They are where much of your best innovation will come from. Connecting them directly to the customer gives them an (all-too-rare, unfortunately) opportunity to develop empathy on a first-hand basis. Rather than having you send them a bunch of notes that you took, which can read as dry and impersonal, they have an opportunity to meet a real human being, with real motivations and real challenges. This will hammer home the frustration inherent in the customer problem
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