JISC and OCLC profile the digital information seeker, a post from federatedsearchblog.com has a great summary of a report that summarizes how the way people look for information is changing.
Read this post and then watch the podcast What does the digital information seeker look like?
Full details at: Digital information seekers: How academic libraries can support the use of digital resources.
A reply I got to suggesting asking users about their needs:
I have never heard of an inventor making surveys to test things out. That is nonsense. At most what that can tell you is little details, ways to fine tune a system. It will never let you see the big changes coming.
The average user has at least as much imagination as would be tyrants of the WWW have arrogance, if not more.
I am going to ignore that advice and think you should as well.