Creating A Project Idea That Is Right For You
My SLTP 2020 Walkthrough: Part 1
The entire concept of connecting the dots backward rests in this step. When you have a solid idea of what your end goal is, the steps you need to take to achieve it will become clear.
I strongly believe in goal-driven learning. What that means is you learn something because you need it to build something, not because everyone else is learning it or to put it up in your resume. Learning should be driven by a stronger purpose. Of course, there will be people who would learn new things for the joy of it or expand their base knowledge. That’s a different context which I will cover some other day.
Here, I will be sharing my thoughts on how to come up with a good idea. I would suggest you analyze it for yourself, gain insights, and cultivate a thinking process that will help you.
Phase 1: Asking the right questions
What kind of technologies do you find fascinating? What do you want to build? These can be difficult to answer. I do understand that having that one big idea can be hard. A simpler question would be, ‘What is your dream company? What kind of projects are they working on? That could be a good starting point.
At this moment do not think about questions like-
- Will I actually be able to build it?
- I have never written a single line of code. Do I need to learn a programming language first?
- This feels too complicated. I don’t think I can do it.
Any other doubts you may have, put it to rest. Just think in terms of ideas that EXCITE you.
I have a pretty good clarity of what I want. My fascination has been in creating real-world applications that can do specific tasks. From this point, when I connected a dot backward, I found that AI can power such applications. That is my reason why I even use “AI”. It gets my job done.
To quote two recent examples- I wanted to create and curate content with the help of computer programs. The specific type of content I wanted was of two types, like news and information in general and creative stuff like Art and Poetry. Tracing a point backward from here, I found out a few deep learning models that can do this and there are ways to automate the handling of social media accounts.
If you don’t have clarity with the technology or the real-world application you want, you can think in line with the company you want to work with, say Google, Microsoft, etc. (or a mix of both).
To get some notion, you can refer to the descriptions of various job postings of your dream companies and see what excites you the most. Once, you have a basic intuition of this, you can connect a dot backward and ask yourselves, which technologies are used to build such an application?
Phase 2: Finding your answers
Let me think in terms of both Companies and Applications. So, the real-world application I have in mind is to create something that will create and distribute content on social media.
You might wonder how this idea materialized from thin air. I am basically a content creator by passion. I just thought, what if I had something that can help me in creating and share content better? The answer, a computer program. And then you ask, what kind of computer program?
So, even if you have absolutely no clue of the idea or the bigger picture, try to see if you can take inspiration from your everyday life. Is there something that you (or someone you know) do in the everyday life which you feel can be made better?
I found that AI can be used to create content. So I started looking at top companies working in a similar domain to understand what they are doing in the same field. These would be firms like Nvidia, DeepMind, Google Tensorflow, OpenAI, etc.
After exploring for some time, OpenAI sounded like the perfect organization I should take inspiration from. Not to mention, GPT-2, a language generation model that can be used to generate poetry was made by them.
My interest was in applied AI. I do not plan to inherently create something like GPT-2 or a new deep learning model, but use the existing models in some application. For example, say, I want to make a program that creates content as per my requirement and tweets it on twitter automatically.
So, I started looking at Applied AI jobs for more inspiration and then I found this-
Now, I have two things finalized:
- A primitive idea of what I want to build- Something related to applied AI, a framework that creates content, curates information, and interacts with social media.
- A reference job description that can help me convert my primitive idea into something more solid and industry-relevant.
If you are following the self-learning technology program along with me, here is a checklist for you at this stage.
- You have a job description to refer to.
- You have a basic intuition of what you want to build. It can be vague at this moment.
Even after reading this blog, if you are still unsure of the idea you want to pursue, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn for some doubt clarification or suggestions.
Combining both of these can help you answer questions like, how do I build this? What kind of technologies do I use? etc.
I will dissect this process by creating a well-defined project road map in my next article.
That’s about it. See you again in my next blog :)
For more details about SLTP 2020, visit-
I have also created a peer to peer learning group on WhatsApp (Can be migrated to Telegram if more people are interested) to support your self-learning journey and the exchange of ideas and experiences with the community. There is a google form in the above article, which you can fill to get the invite link.
