Marc Köhlbrugge
PRO
@marc
Using Google scoped by URL works very well:
search inurl:wip.chat/questions
I do plan to add native search functionality.
Stop thinking in terms of ideas and start thinking in terms of solutions for problems.
So I would rephrase your question to: How do I discover problems worth solving?
This is a much easier question to answer, although it is somewhat personal. Here are the related questions I ask myself:
- Is this a problem I care about?
- Is this a problem I have myself? (helps me better understand the nuances of it)
- How much if any are people currently paying for sub-optimal solutions?
- Is their any other evidence that shows people are willing to invest in a solution?
- How many people have this problem?
- How significant is this problem for them? How often will they encounter it?
- How much does this problem affect them? How high is it on their priority list?
- How easily are these people reached?
- Are people aware of their problem?
- Do the people experiencing the problem also have the ability to do something about it? (important in B2B)
You can do this research before you write any line of code, but coding a prototype can also be a good way to get answers to these questions. Finding that balance depends on your specific circumstances.
Edit: My questions are more about validating a specific problem, than coming up with problems to solve. To come up with problems you can later verify, there are some suggestions:
- Look at your own life. Are there things that annoy you or feel inefficient? Those might be problems worth solving.
- Same for friends and colleagues.
- Search Twitter for queries like "does anyone know", "why can't", etc. Get creative!
- Search online discussion forms for problems people need help with.
- Also look at Quora, WIP Q&A, etc. Questions often arise from problems.
- Same for books. Look at popular non-fiction books. Which problems do they aim to solve? Could you build a product for it?
Ah yes in the early days I actually prototyped something like that for myself. Where it would challenge me to beat last week's number of completed todo's. But now I don't feel like the quantity of todo's is that meaningful. Sometimes you complete one really important todo (that may or may not have taken a lot of work), and other times you complete a bunch of (possibly smaller) todo's that are not necessarily that useful.
🙌
Having a trendline comparing to last week/month would be cool!
Ah yes in the early days I actually prototyped something like that for myself. Where it would challenge me to beat last week's number of completed todo's. But now I don't feel like the quantity of todo's is that meaningful. Sometimes you complete one really important todo (that may or may not have taken a lot of work), and other times you complete a bunch of (possibly smaller) todo's that are not necessarily that useful.
What about the personal summary of your recently completed todo's (perhaps for motivation and making sure you're working on the right things), and recently added pending todo's (as a reminder) ?
Also a nope — I'm on top of my pending todos multiple times per day and check the completed ones at the end of the day.
However a more analytical approach that shows charts and how many todos I've completed each day/week/month, maybe when I'm most productive (time of day) would be nice to have.
🙌
Having a trendline comparing to last week/month would be cool!
Ah yes in the early days I actually prototyped something like that for myself. Where it would challenge me to beat last week's number of completed todo's. But now I don't feel like the quantity of todo's is that meaningful. Sometimes you complete one really important todo (that may or may not have taken a lot of work), and other times you complete a bunch of (possibly smaller) todo's that are not necessarily that useful.
- Being able to express yourself to people with varying levels of technical understanding
- Being able to actively listen to understand what people really need
- Being a pleasant person to work with / be around
- Knowing your own value
- Humility (and being open to learn)
- Being able to see the bigger picture (e.g. why your work might not always ship)
- Many more…
I think the same framework applies. Instead of adoption you'd be looking at consumption, how much the content is shared, conversion rates to newsletters, etc.
If you find it hard to decide whether to invest more time, ask yourself what date you'd need in order to make that decision either. For example, if you don't know yet how passionate people are about the content add something to gauge this. (newsletter signup, etc)
Using just the slug without an ID is the most descriptive* and probably most SEO-friendly. The downside is that we need save the slug and any historical ones in order to retrieve the related question. In Rails this is pretty straightforward though using the FriendlyId gem.
(* the ID does however suggest how old the question is. A lower ID means an older question. I'm not sure if that's an advantage or disadvantage. Probably doesn't matter that much. )