The authors of The Pragmatic Programmer about users not knowing what they need:
Dave Thomas: Tying in to what Andy said earlier about software having a Heisenberg effect, where delivering the software changes the user’s perception of the requirements, almost by definition, your target is moving. The sheer act of delivering the first release is going to make the user realize, “Oh, that’s not quite what I wanted.”
Andy Hunt: Or even worse yet, “Oh, that’s exactly what I wanted. But now having seen that, I’ve changed my mind. I’ve learned. I’d now like to do this instead, or this in addition.” Just by introducing the software, you’ve changed the rules of the game. Now the user can see more possibilities that they weren’t aware of before. The user will say, “Oh, if you can do that. What I’d really like is if you could do this.” And there is no way to predict that up front.
Stephen Anderson and Karl Fast in Figure It Out: Getting from Information to Understanding:
All cultures start with the ability to distinguish dark things from light things. This is followed by the recognition of red. After that, it might be the addition of yellow or green. And blue always seems to come last. Not every language follows the exact same path, but they adhere to this same general pattern.
One of the many odd things of the Vietnamese language is that both “blue” and “green” are “màu xanh”. In case you need to differentiate between the two you would add something like “of the sky” (màu xanh da trời) or “of the tree” (màu xanh lá cây).
I had one Vietnamese teacher that would mark the traffic light with “blue light” and the Korean presidential offices with “green house”.