How to get feedback on your ideas
There are different ways to get feedback on your ideas. I am a big fan of the simple framework Design Thinking provides, to fine-tune your thinking about an idea. I have led many people through the experience and every time, I am amazed at how it all comes together at the end. We start off with a problem statement, and (typically) a hypothesis, and end up with a prototype that will help test that hypothesis. There is no failing in this mode — you keep learning based on feedback, and continue to move in the direction that gives you the most promise.
The first iteration of the prototype could be something you draw on sticky notes or index cards, the next one could be using Keynote, and so on. The level of realism in the prototype keeps ratcheting up, as you learn more. The first prototype could be even simpler, like a “conversation” or a “story”. If you think about it, the “elevator pitch” is a way to visualize an idea — it is a prototype.
As you take the prototype and show it to others, take care to differentiate between feedback about the idea, and feedback about the prototype. The feedback could be about the prototype. If the person giving you the feedback cannot really grasp what the prototype is, then improve on the prototype to make it much more realistic. Or, it could be about the idea itself. In that case, test with more people and see if you need to tweak the solution.
As an example, here is a rough prototype for an idea. “Imagine that you could request a car using an app on your phone…”. Can you validate it with somebody today? Without thinking about how to execute on it, you can still validate it. Validate on whether the idea should be further tested.
Last week, I spent some time helping a few friends who want to go build a product. At the end of it, we came away with a prototype (with zero lines of code) that will help them validate their idea. On a different project that I led, we were talking to people and getting their feedback on our prototype (done in Keynote). And, we got this feedback “Can I download that app?”. We had to politely tell the person that it was a prototype.
If you are executing on an idea, have you validated it enough? You can still get feedback on your ideas going forward, and do it in a very cheap way, so the throw away work is minimal. If you have an idea (or that list of ideas in a notebook), go get some feedback on it today, tomorrow, this weekend. Take that first step towards executing on your idea.
