Oh yeah - I do the same. I conduct an initial "interview" with the receipient and set up a pinterest board of patterns I think they might like. I ask them to weed out the ones they don't like. This way I know they will like what they get and they don't know exactly what they will receive. Sometimes I use their favorites from their pinterest board as an inspiration to come up with my own design.
As far as colors - another tricky thing. If they are local I bring in paint chips in different shades/hues of the colors they like and have them pick a few that would make them happy. I then use those paint chips to select fabric. If they are not local I ask them to basically do the same but let me know what they have selected. I then go hunt down the paint chips myself.
It's funny - one of my persnickety friends/coworkers was pregnant with her first child and I wanted to make the perfect baby quilt. She's not a quilter and struggled picking a quilt pattern from the pinterest board- mainly because she was having a hard time looking past the colors and/or fabrics in the pictures. It took a couple of iterations before I felt confident I knew what would work for her. When I brought in the paint chips to pick colors she said - "this is too much work, whatever you pick will be fine". I forced her to select colors and in the end made something I know she loves. While she was on maternity leave she called me and apologized for being "so difficult" in the design phase. She said one of her husband's coworkers made the baby a brown and yellow quilt that was everything she did not like. She said she would never use it and asked what to do with it....I recommended she donate it. I never want to be that maker.