Spark Imagination

So I don't know about you all, but I thoroughly enjoyed the Spark Innovation article namely the five (5) step process of Empathic Design and the Observing in Cyberspace portion of the reading. How does one get the job where you are paid to sit at a cafe, or some other comfortable public place of business, and watch people be people? It is brilliant to literally track the end user in relation to their use of any given product or service. There have been too many times I have purchased an item and found a fault in the functionality of the product could have been solved by simply "asking the end user." Companies may be catching on...finally and thanks to companies like IDEO.