great breakdown. the gap between "what people say they want" and "what job they're actually hiring the product for" is something i keep running into.

one thing that helped me a lot was realizing my product wasn't competing with other products in the same category at all. the actual competition was boredom, doomscrolling, and the default state of not paying attention to your own day. once you frame it that way, the whole feature prioritization changes because you're solving for a completely different job.

the bosch example is perfect for this: you can keep adding features that address the stated preference, or you can go one level deeper and address the actual constraint. most teams optimize for the former because it's easier to A/B test.