When it comes to ideation, we are all pretty different. Some people get new ideas EVERY waking second, while others may only get a few throughout their life — though the ideas these people have could potentially be big, life-changing ones. I fit into the former category. New ideas come out of me like leaves fall in November. They cannot be stopped, and they pile up from the ground up unless deliberately swept.
If you are either following or participating in this year’s Product Hunt Global Hackathon, you might be like me. It’s no surprise that my enquiry (and quite possibly yours as well) made it to the official FAQ page:
Concurrent Projects (not to be confused with Multitasking)
Using what I call the “Concurrent Projects” methodology, I tend to be more productive when working on multiple projects at any given time. In some ways, this allows me to make the most of one set of resources and streamlined processes.
(This is not the same as multitasking. Rather than dwelling on here, I’ll continue to illustrate how they are different as I go.)
My computer and internet access are some pretty good examples of said resources, and so are services like the Adobe Creative Cloud (formerly known as Adobe Creative Suite). This methodology has worked well for me on both commissioned and self-started projects.
[Note to self and all: I am going to add a simple infographic to show how things can be done more efficiently this way.]
Now, without further ado, what exactly have I decided to build over the next 30 days? Here they are…
Product #1: The Rolling Zones
The Rolling Zones are essentially Google Maps for anyone who needs step-free access. Sounds simple, right? Building it out will probably be anything but… And I’ll challenge myself to see how far I can go.
The initial goal is for the product to be open source, so that like-minded developers can build on top of it to benefit even more people. I will also attempt to publicly document the development process as much as I can.
Product #2: Wear Emojis
Wear Emojis will be an ecommerce site that sells — you guessed it — emoji apparel.
I have indeed built and run a few ecommerce sites before. How many? Just enough to know that we won’t know anything for sure unless we experiment. Hence the experiment. Ideally a for-profit one, too.
Product #3: Inventginations
Inventginations will be a living feed of my imaginary inventions.
The term product is being used loosely here. But let’s see what comes out of it.
If nothing else, it will be a nice little playground to “solve” the problem described in the first paragraph — too many ideas, not enough time to build them all.
Day 1 Progress
- Naming research: results shown above
- Email: All three of the new email accounts created
- Social media — Twitter: All three new accounts created (1, 2, 3)
- Social media — Facebook: All three new Pages created (1, 2, 3)
All of the above tasks combined took me not too much longer than if I were to make one product only.
What about you?
Are you a fellow maker? Hackathon participant or otherwise, I would be curious to hear more about what you are making.
