Week 6 — Thesis

We all wrote a literature review about our topic, so what? This week is about actually understanding what the heck you wrote. Since finishing my review, it’s opened up more questions about what I’m trying to accomplish with my idea, and how I can get people to understand its value. The biggest questions surrounding my topic is what/who does this idea benefit? What problem is it trying to solve? I hear this all the time, and completely back its sharp authority over any business venture, repeat it with me: It’s not a good product if it’s not solving anyone’s problem. No matter how thrilled you are over a project, if nobody wants it, you’re wasting your time.

To avoid that, it was time for deciding on which problem space I wanted this project to enter. Craft based skills? Language? As I thought through this it stopped being about who I should focus on and more of getting the idea out there and see what types of people responded best to it. It’s one thing to talk out loud with a friend who isn’t part of your audience, dumping all of your conceptual thoughts on them as they pull them all out of Conceptual Land, but its another to present your idea in all its present completeness to someone who is actually interested. Moving forward, I plan on to narrow the audience I speak to, having the answer from more generic audiences guide me to more specific audiences with the end goal of finding an audience with a problem that would be alleviated by what I am spending the next year trying to solve.