"Do You Want" is a Meeting Smell
This meeting smell happens when someone from the technology team asks "Do you want...".
"Do you want the user's session to continue after they leave the site?"
"Do you want us to optimize that for search engines?"
"Do you want auto-complete in the search box?"
These are bad questions because they don't convey what's really being asked: "Is this feature worth our time and effort?".
What the business owner hears is "Should we include this sweet feature that will make you look good?". Their answer is almost certainly yes, but they're not answering the real question.
The real question is "How important is this feature?" This conveys the idea that the tech team wants to focus on essentials. It also reminds the business owner that not all features are created equal.
I wrote before about how stating "I want" is a good smell. The difference is that it's OK for the business owner to declare "I want", but not ok for someone to ask "Do you want?". It's leading the witness.
Every time you ask someone if they want an awesome feature the answer will be yes. The real information comes when you ask how badly they want it.
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While I mostly agree with you, I have 2 points to make.
1) I enjoy your "smells", but I worry you might start constructing too specific. We don't want people to have to pull out a double sided cheat sheet of smells, only to learn the hard way that there's always exceptions to the rule :P
2) I don't think that "do you want" is always bad. I have used it several times, and find it valid. Business owners sometimes forget important pieces.
* Most of our pages have tracking pixels. "Do you want this new page to have tracking pixels?"
* All the other pages have featureA with a redbackground. "Do you want this new page's featureA to have a red background".
For situations like that, I think that "Do you want" makes sense, but I do agree that for larger scenarios like "Do you want this new page to be able to do your taxes and to be able to date lonely middle-aged men?" Yes, that's not as good.
@Dave Point 1 - Absolutely, there are certainly exceptions. I know that programmers in a corporate environment struggle with this all the time, so thinking about it never hurts.
@Dave Point 2 - I feel you on this one. There's a huge different between zeroing in on something that's been asked for and some totally new feature. Experience helps most.
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