Most AV projects don't start with a technical spec — they start with a stakeholder describing a problem in plain language: “we can't hear the witness from the back row,” or “the video call keeps freezing.” Gathering customer information is the disciplined process of turning that kind of statement into concrete requirements: who uses the room, how often, what's worked and failed before, what budget and timeline exist, and what constraints (historic building, security policy, IT standards) shape the solution.
A courtroom is a particularly demanding customer-information exercise: the judge, court reporter, jury, attorneys, and public all have different listening and viewing needs from different fixed positions in the room, and evidence-presentation requirements (document cameras, exhibit displays) add another layer most conference rooms never deal with.
A site survey follows the interview: physically walking the space to document what's actually there before designing anything. That means measuring room dimensions and sightlines, checking existing cabling and conduit paths, noting available power and network drops, assessing acoustics and ambient lighting (covered in depth next week), and photographing the space for later reference. The output is typically an as-built drawing or annotated floor plan — the ground truth every later design decision gets checked against.
Skipping or rushing this stage is the single most common cause of AV project failure: a beautifully designed system installed against a site survey that missed a support column blocking a sightline, or a conduit path that doesn't actually exist, creates expensive rework. The habit of documenting rather than assuming is what separates a site survey from a guess.