

A Missing Link in Start-Up Ideas: "Insights" - evac

Over the past couple months that I’ve been on Hacker News, one thing has consistently bugged me about the way we think up ideas, especially whenever I come across someone’s latest start-up ideas.<p>The process of idea-generating usually starts out along the line of “think about a problem that you wish could be solved” and/or “build something people want” (aka think about a problem that THEY wish could be solved). Then think of how to solve the problem and, if you thought of one, there’s your potential idea right there! Pretty obvious right?<p>Except, I always feel like we’re overlooking something important between the problem-finding stage and the idea-finding stage. It’s almost on the same level of having a bad execution of an idea, or rather, you could almost say that it IS responsible for leading to many bad executions of ideas.<p>Specifically, I think what we’re missing is the insight-stage. By “insight”, I’m referring to your understanding and selected assumptions about the true nature of the problem. Everyone will have assumptions about the true nature of a problem, whether they’re aware of it or not. When you DO insightfully think about the problem from different perspectives (each of which comes with new sets of assumptions about the nature of the problem), it should hopefully lead you to good ideas that addresses the problem much better than if you didn’t do so.<p>Now, when you DON’T insightfully think about the assumptions underlying the problem, I’m guessing that you would probably unconsciously adopt the assumptions underlying how the problem is currently being solved. In other words, you’re probably adopting the underlying assumptions of a solution that wasn’t good enough to solve the problem if it’s still a problem. When there’s enough people adopting the same assumptions about a problem, regardless of how different their ideas and features may be on the surface, they may all end up trying to solve the problem in the same way.<p>If anyone’s curious, what drove me to write this post was because of my experiences with searching for a personal productivity app for my sister and I (ie. getting you to exercise, stop procrastinating on your need-to-dos, creating good habits, achieving goals, etc). Most of the apps were about tracking, surveilling and/or reminding you, which is probably useful for some people and some situations, but not for people truly struggling with self-discipline and not for most activities that you have low motivation or ability for (ie. getting yourself to exercise regularly if you haven’t done so since high school P.E.).<p>But the real problem came when most of these apps (and subsequent newer apps) kept the underlying assumptions that the problem is technical, which simply led to more ideas of how to more efficiently track/remind/surveil/organize your activities when, if you don’t mind my bias here (I come from a psychology background), I felt they were missing half the problem, the very important psychological half that influences people’s motivation and perseverance. I can understand that it’s not the developers’ fault that they’re not behavioral psychologists, but still, I couldn’t help but notice that most people-problems out there tends to be solved from a technical point of view because, obviously, the only people who could build apps are technical people. I think there are potential to discover hidden but amazing insights simply from combining perspectives of different disciplines. (At least, for my personal interest, it'd be interesting to see what come out of programmers reading up on behavioral psychology or psychologists jumping into programming.)<p>If there’s any takeaway point here, it would hopefully bring with it greater awareness of one’s underlying assumptions about a problem when thinking up ideas, which would hopefully lead to better execution of products.<p>(Eventually, I became frustrated enough that I’m currently learning programming so I could build a personal productivity app based on my own set of assumptions about the true nature of the problem...well, we’ll see how that turn out...)
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komlenic
+1, Excellent post. You should have a blog or something...

I've noticed this too when examining what I view to be problem spaces. Often
there is truly room for technical innovation alone - a better way to do
something - but it is only when this technical innovation actually addresses a
pain-point that you end up with something great.

For example I've been looking at some ideas in the personal debt-reduction
space lately. It's easy to dream up technically better tools that could help
people visualize and track how they can pay off their debts and build wealth,
but that would require the assumption that the tools alone are people's only
pain point. Paying down debt isn't fun. It takes a long commitment with no
short term reward. It's not sexy. Work from these assumptions and somehow
address them and you've helped solve a pain-point. Work from the assumption
that we can build a better tool with feature x, and you ignore the real
problem, and your real opportunity to address it.

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rwjackson5
Let me start off by saying I completely agree with what you are saying as I
think in a lot of problem solving (not just programming) there are underlying
assumptions that turn into group mentality (just look at real estate in the
U.S. as an example as a majority of people assumed that prices would continue
to rise indefinitely) so the true underlying problem gets missed.

The one aspect of your discussion that I tend to disagree with is that these
apps you were searching for weren't providing what most people are looking for
- motivation. I think based on the fact they are searching for the apps in the
first place shows they already have motivation or they would not be searching
for such help. I'm not exactly sure how an app would motivate a person to
exercise besides being an alarm clock letting them know to get up an hour
early to exercise. I probably am missing a potential solution here but I am
interested in seeing your app.

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evac
You have a good point about people already being motivated to do something if
they're looking for an app. However, "wanting" to do something tends to be a
short-term motivation as compared to the grittier, determined motivation of
"doing" something. For example, in my experience with my sister when she
wanted to learn foreign languages in her spare time, she started off very
motivated and we got all the right resources and "tools". However, when the
"honeymoon" period of motivation wears off, it becomes difficult to keep going
at it until you reach that stable sweet spot called "habit".

Though I referenced "motivation" earlier for simplicity, the underlying
psychological mechanics I want to build in are much more complex than
motivation. I've been researching an interesting cross-disciplinary domain
between psychology and technology and have learned that it IS possible to use
computer or mobile devices to motivate and shape the habits of a person. For
the actual implementation of that, I'm still tweaking it around, but will
hopefully be able to have some experiments out by this summer or fall. Of
course, I could always try the faster route and find someone else to build the
app for me, but I like programming enough that I want to achieve the self-
satisfaction of building the first prototype at least.

(A semi-success story. After the past 2 years of tweaking and examining our
assumptions, my sister and I have successfully designed a self-sustaining
system that keeps her engaged in what she wants to learn...on a 10-hour daily
schedule, she's learning 3 languages, music and other subjects without
supervision (she's 15). It's more rigorous than her high school curriculum but
it's amazing how lighting-speed she learns when she's in this state of flow
everyday. Now hopefully what I've learned from this can be applied to many
other people too.)

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mariusz10jonski
Good point. I come from advertising industry where insights are/should be
fundamental. Imagine reading briefs produced by strategists with Insight form
filled with customers expected behavior. Seams like a silly misstake but it's
common habit. Guess it's not only technical people that seam to believe in
wishful creativity. I think your point is so intuitive it's not even worth
discussing, but it seams to nail down long expected trend in new business
approach to consumers. In this book you'll find 7 key steps in new business
creation: [http://www.amazon.com/Flipped-Bottom-Up-Co-Creation-
Replacin...](http://www.amazon.com/Flipped-Bottom-Up-Co-Creation-Replacing-
Innovation/dp/1932841482/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1296680461&sr=8-4) If anyone
needs an Insight Specialist feel free to drop me a line :)

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allantyoung
I sometimes describe something as 'insightful' when it fundamentally changes
my point of view or long-held beliefs.

But why do we need to fundamentally shake someone's core behavior or
worldview? By definition, most startup ideas are not gamechangers. They're
merely modest solutions that require a lot of hard work to produce.

I do agree that if you arrive at an unexpected psychological insight, you have
an opportunity to change culture and create massive value. But that would be
an unrealistic expectation for every startup to fulfill.

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keiferski
Agree with you 110% on the technical issue; most apps and websites attempt to
solve problems in a technical way, which isn't always the best method.

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necrodome
Any recommendations to a programmer for a reading list?

