

Show HN: MonsterLumen helps you brainstorm business problems - ssebro

Hi Hn,<p>A buddy and I worked on this prototype to see if we could design a system that helps people think creatively. I'd love your feedback, tips and pointers - and yes, I know it's a bit ugly (much css work to be done).<p>Check it out at beta.monsterlumen.com and let us know what you think!
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mneumegen
I like the idea although it definitely needs a bit more work. I used the nudge
a few times out of curiosity a got a question that I wasn't interested in
answering but there was no way of exiting the dialog. I think a bit more
instruction on what is happening and an indication of how far through the
process I am would have been helpful.

If you're planning to charge people for the service you might want to have a
think about who your target market is and how you will make money. I see
MonsterLumen as an educational tool that teaches you skills and techniques to
think outside the box, once I've got those skills I don't need your app
anymore so just consider that when you're coming up with pricing.

~~~
ssebro
Great feedback. You can press esc to exit the nudge dialog - we purposefully
made it hard to exit because we wanted people to engage in seemingly silly
questions, because in our experience, that's when you have breakthroughs. As
an aside, we've also noticed that the tool doesn't work unless you have a
legitimate problem that you care about and are trying to solve - made up
problems just don't cut it.

I agree that we could do better at communicating progress and more about the
process - I think this is one of the major things we need to work on.

We're not thinking about charging for it right now, it's just a proof of
concept to answer the question "Can software make someone more creative"?

We're not worried about people leaving and applying the skills elsewhere,
since what we've seen in practice is people who've paid thousands of dollars
to learn these skills revert to their old habits once real problems pop up.

Thanks a lot for giving it a shot, and for your feedback!

~~~
soneca
I used it for a real problem and I loved the idea and how simply is built. But
I used alone, while I still considering try it with my team, I just didn't
feel very compelled to send invitations. I use Asana, if this was a tool of
their product, with all my teammates there, our taks and projects listed, and
people already in the "let's talk about business" mood, I would certainly use
it.

I don't see it as a tool to teach you "creative skills", not at all! I see as
a good brainstorming tool. A good, simple one. The main advantage to real
meetings brainstorming sessions is that this is asynchronous, your team
doesn't have to be all together at the same time. You may just say "let's
brainstorm this through the next 3 days, and friday we decide what to do". And
I liked the 2 nudges I got very much! And I like that is not that easy to
skip.

But, as a web app alone, with very poor social resources, it lost all its
appeal. Something that I think would make it great is to allow all
communication to be made through email (just as Basecamp and Asana do). But if
everything is via email, then it may be very powerfull. But you have to create
a great UX with added value, because one can simply create a email, copy 3
teammates and start a brainstorming thread. How to introduce the nudges, a
good organization of topics and ideas, an easy to upvote good ideas maybe,
etc; that would be hard to do through this email communication.

Well, I think the concept is great, I hope you can make a good product out of
it.

~~~
_lex
Hi Soneca - thanks for your feedback and for giving it a shot.

I think your hesitation about sharing may be linked to the fact that sharing
the brainstorm feels like it's real-time, so to share with your coworkers
would involve breaking their flow and dragging them into your current
brainstorm. That explanation seems to fit with you not wanting to change the
mood - am I correct in this assumption?

I'm really glad you liked your nudges - we were initially not sure people
would "get" them. We're a little worried about async brainstorming, because a
lot of the real value from brainstorming comes from stealing your coworkers'
ideas and building on them - so you make their ideas better. Async makes this
more difficult.

I love your idea about email being the conduit. I think i'd like to build on
that :), and that with tools like mailgun, it's not going to be terribly hard.
Thanks a lot for this 3rd paragraph - a lot of actionable ideas here.

Thanks for your support - we hope to make it into something awesome too :).

~~~
soneca
Your first assumption is partially correct. But I think the problem is there
are two invitations at a time: i) please join me at my brainstorming and ii)
please use this tool for it.

The invitation i) is inherent of the purpouse, altough is totally acceptable
only with coworkers. If I want to brainstorm a startup idea with random
friends, this invitation may bother my friends - even if they get that they
don't need to answer immediately.

The invitation ii) is not inherent, is marketing. It is a barrier to share.
You must have good, cool, smart way to introduce the invited people to the
tool. Your copywriting will make a lot of differencehere.

You can note that both problems are solved if the tool is already a feature
inside a team management tool - only coworkers and using a tool they already
know.

ABout the nudges, I guess you have to find just the right time to use them,
and also work hard in making it attractive to users, so they want to "play
with it".

And about the "async", actually I used the word wrongly. What I am, the tool
must keep the chronological order of a brainstorm, in order to one improve
each other idea. But the advantage here is that it allows people do it
remotely and free from a time restriction. I will read all the ideas there are
coming, but I will send mine whenever I choose to. It still a conversation,
but it allows more intermissions than a face-to-face meeting.

~~~
_lex
Interesting.

We're targeting business problems and coworkers since workers have better
incentives to contribute (compared to friends), and businesses can see
tangible cash value from being more creative.

The thought was that if a coworker sent you an invite/email saying - "I want
your ideas on this", it'd be hard for you to not contribute. But I'm hearing
that it breaks the work flow too much to expect people to leave email and
their current task management tool to use our tool whenever they want to
brainstorm. Is that because it feels like they're spamming their
friends/coworkers, or because their friends/coworkers don't necessarily want
to learn to use another gadget/app? Would it be different if we emailed your
coworkers on your behalf saying "soneca just brainstormed x" - want to add
your ideas and help her?

I think integrating into a team management tool is a great idea - or maybe
directly into gmail like streak (www.streak.com).

Async definitely was what we were going for - busy people want to brainstorm
with you and contribute ideas, but it's impossible to get 5 of them in a room
at the same time. MonsterLumen should help with that.

~~~
soneca
I like the way you worded the email here "soneca just...". I think you will
have to test a lot your copywriting, it looks to me that this will make all
the differece in the world for your product.

When/if you implement it using email tell me, I would love to try it on a real
world situation.

~~~
_lex
We definitely will.

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ssebro
The URL is <http://beta.monsterlumen.com>, and I'll be sticking around in the
comments to get your feedback!

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sixQuarks
you want me to be honest? This feels like a feature to me, not a business.
Very hard to get traction with something like this.

~~~
ssebro
Most definitely - we love honesty. Can you flesh out your comment a little? I
think most businesses have problems getting traction to start out - what
specific challenges are you seeing?

~~~
sixQuarks
well, that's the problem. Getting traction is going to be very difficult with
this. You're expecting people to find, or remember this site next time they
need to brainstorm something. It's basically a stand-alone "feature".

Marketing is difficult, but more importantly, getting visitors to stick is
going to be extremely difficult.

If, on the other hand, you do something bigger, such as create a brainstorming
resource site with tips, tricks, and all sorts of useful stuff that will
attract visitors - this could be a nice feature to add to that site.

~~~
_lex
I think we were also thinking of it as a platform for community thought.
Imagine embedding a brainstorm widget at the end of your blog article to get
ideas for a problem your company is solving.

