Present half baked ideas
Why you should present ideas that are not clear
Usually, before you get to people to ask them input or feedback we wait until we have a clear idea of what we want to achieve. In my experience, I found it quiet helpful to present to my friends and colleagues also ideas that I just quickly thought about, and didn’t really take the time to define clearly. Here is what happened when I did it:
People will ask questions
Because you are presenting an idea that isn’t completely clear for you, it will not be clear for others too. And that’s a chance, because people will start to ask questions about it. Even if you don’t really know the answer you will start to formulate something that could match, because you just don’t want to look like an idiot. That’s when you start really creating your idea. By simply having a conversation with people you are pushed to create something that makes sense.
They will fill the gaps with assumptions
An other thing happens quiet often when you present half baked ideas: people paraphrase your idea to tell you that they did understand you. It the typical answer starting with: “Ah… so it’s about… no?”. What is funny there is that half of the time, present you something completely different or with a new focus. What happens, is that people feel the gap and tell you how they see the world, how they assume your idea works. These assumptions are a key part in understanding how people will react to your idea and seeing what mental model they use to define it. For example, you explain your idea and then your friend says: “Ah… so you want to create an app?”. If that wasn’t your goal, it’s interesting to ask your friend why he thought it is an app. That’s when you start to refine your idea.
You can feel the potential
When you present half baked ideas, people are more critical than when you present something finished. Because it’s a draft, they assume that it’s ok to give advices or to say what they really think about it just too help you. If you present something finished, they don’t want to break the nice precious thing that took you so much time to produce.
Because people give you more critical and genuine feedback, you will quickly see if your idea is understood by people and if they see potential in it.
Going further
Another way to find out the potential of an idea is to do interviews,
in this article I explain how to run interview that do not suck.
