How do you find problems to solve when you don't have the domain knowledge?

Although you are a Software Engineer, I would bet my life that you have expertise in other areas of your life. Maybe you are not a professional [fill in the blank here], but you move through your life 24 hours each day. I have to assume you run into things that make you think "well that's a dumb way to do that" or "Man this is frustrating to do this thing this way" or even "I can make a thing to make this task i do/fail to do every day easier for me".

When you think any of those things, you have identified a problem. Maybe it is not the problem you want to work on. Maybe it is not a problem you actually know how to solve. But it is a problem that you encounter, and therefore a potential problem someone will pay you to solve for them.

Example: I am NOT a cycling expert, nor a professional cyclist. What I am is web developer, and what i WAS in previous life was a banker/financial investments sales person. Based on your definition of "domain knowledge" I should only be focusing on problems in banking/finance/investments/web dev. None of that interests me - maybe web dev and helping others learn the skills, but meh.

However, I like to cycle - much more in my youth than now but I still enjoy it. And I have ALWAYS wanted to ride a century (100 miles on a bike). My best is 87 miles , but I don't train for it and have kept putting it off.

So what did I do? First I decided to build a tool to 1. track my own riding, and 2. generate a ride plan that will get me from 0 - 100 miles confidently in 6-weeks. As I was building it, I assumed (correctly) that if I had this "problem" of not sticking to my plan on my own, then other people - veteran cyclists and novices alike - probably do to. Are there other tools out there that do generate and track cycling plans? Probably, but I never looked to find out.

I built the thing, kept it and never put the paywall I hoped to add to it, forgot about it because I moved on to the next of my 25+ shiny ideas to solve "problems", and it gets small traffic of users each month. Could I market and monetize it, probably. Will it be a million dollar project? Probably not.

What this does illustrate though is that you don't need to be a professional/expert in a domain to have a problem you want to solve in that domain.

FInd the things you personally struggle with each day: procrastination, planning, jogging, working out, eating, travel, whatever. If you have that problem someone else does. If someone else does, maybe someone will pay you to solve it for them. And if 1 person will, 1,000 or more will.

You don't need lightening to strike, you just have to provide simple solutions to everyday problems and get that solution in front of enough people with the same problem - and enough money to pay for the solution.

Good luck.

Disclaimer: This is probably all BS and I am probably wrong. However, every person I read about, hear about, is interviewed on IH started with a rpoblem they and only they wanted to solve for themselves. Then they realized more people probably had the same problem and found ways to put their solution in front of enough people willing to pay for it. I find that many of us (myself very much included) overcomplicate this and spend so much time thinking of a "perfect" and "undiscovered" problem to solve. Stop. Cherry pick the simple ones.

I hope this post helps. Let me know. Phil… https://abitgamey.substack.com/p/good-problems-for-our-apps-to-address

You don't necessarily need to start with the domain knowledge, just frequently talk to those who do. This is 90% of the value of UX, not visual design. It's figuring out how users think via research and discovery, then testing your solutions against people who have the domain knowledge.

If you have work experience in software, think about the other teams you worked with, like CX or POs or your CMO and what they complained about. Then set up some coffee/tea/breakfast meetings with people in those areas and just ask them to go through their day, or what they see as problems. You don't want to just take user suggested solutions at face value, but these are evidence of a problem. Get to know where these users "hang out", are there forums or Slack/Discord communities? Meetup groups? I landed up with more good ideas than I knew what to do with. The book "The Mom Test" is a quick way to learn how to talk to people/customers. Talk to family and friends about their jobs and workflows. I've never talked to someone about their workday and not hear about problems. Look for problems that are solved in your domain (software) and not in theirs. Project Management for X is a common approach that actually works, just don't do yet another PM tool for developers.

Set aside some time and deep dive into a domain. Consume everything you can find, read app reviews in the space and take note of complaints.

A bigger problem with jumping into a different domain is making sure you'll stay interested in the long term. Make sure you want to help people in that domain.

This is the exact reason I was building Micro SaaS Ideas for 2 years and loved by 25,000 subscribers. It should be a good starting point to dive into trends and ideas around SaaS.

I had the same problem while building my previous projects and solved the problems by the following ways:

Cofounders:
Industudium.hu is an online education site, that helps large industrial corporations to manage the knowledge of their employees. To be honest, I have no idea how these companies work and what are their challenges, but found 2 cofounders who are experts in industrial education and they helped me a lot!

Become a part of you audience:
EmbedQuiz.com is an online quiz tool, that helps website owners gamify their websites and grow their email list. Although I have years of experience with websites, quizzes can be embedded on blog articles and I didn't know much about blogging and newsletters previously. My solution was to start my own blog and build my own mailing list, while communicating with my audience on Reddit. It help's a lot too!

But there are many other ways to get through this obstacle, like searching for common problems on freelance marketplaces. If many businesses want to hire someone to solve a problem, a SaaS solution that can do the same thing might be useful too.

I think the better we understand our target audiences, the better products we can create. So it's very important to know as much about them as possible before starting project.

I have identified some startup ideas that might interest you and that I will share with you. But before that, I would like to share some remarks as well. First of all, most entrepreneurs face difficulties when starting their first startups, as they try to solve problems they don't understand well. They choose a problem, often based on profitability potential or the illusion of ease of execution instead of choosing a problem based on their unique understanding of it.

Then, choosing an idea is choosing a problem and proposing a unique solution, our own vision to solve it in a personal way. So it is necessary to know how to solve the chosen problem in a personal, new or unprecedented way before embarking on the chosen idea.

In addition, here are some problems that I have identified and that seem to need to be solved in an innovative way:

• AI is not ready for online search as Microsoft and Google envision it. In short, there are many reasons why this is the case. A more reliable AI solution would be a tool that simply guides and assists the user in their search for information. Have a look here : (https://makerstation.substack.com/p/online-research-now-requires-creative)

• Bookmarks Manager Are Stale and Obsolete. There is now the opportunity to create and launch a new product on the market that can finally represent a viable solution for managing the information we get online.

You can look at this : https://swift-speedboat-169.notion.site/Bookmarks-Manager-Are-Stale-and-Obsolete-fb6d4c2e4b0e4e62ad3ec6eb9d5bbdf9

" how can I know what's the pain point for xxx daily tasks, or what are they unhappy about, could be automatized, etc..."

This is the crux of any kind of entrepreneurship, IH-way or classic.
More so, your putative customers often do not know it either, they just work with what they have trying to be happy, plus life is already super complex and all.
To figure it out is art and science, takes time, and is simply hard to do it cleanly.
A way around this is betting on one's common sense, going in cold turkey, and figuring it out on the go.

I think it depends on your motivations. If you want to make a dent in the world, you're only going to have the drive when the going gets tough if you've got passion and interest in that area. If you want to build a profitable company, it doesn't matter so much where you build.

That being said, if you don't know as much about the user group/industry/problems, you need to get completely immersed in the area. Forums like others suggested is a good place to start to see what kind of questions people post and most frequently but theres no substitute for just talking to the user and learning about their habits and frustrations.

If you've identified a problem, you need to start looking at the existing tooling and infrastructure in that industry. Not only does this help you understand the competitive landscape but there may be existing infrastructure that can be harnessed to make your solution more effective.

nice

yes, yes, I would also start studying, let's say, accounting forums and try to delve into their problems ..

IMO best thing is to get domain expertise. Doesn't take incredibly long either: talk to people, read the stuff they read, listen to the things they listen to, and pretty quickly you'll get a good idea of that domain.

Dig into the domain, learn their basics, and understand their workflow... or have somebody in this domain... or choose another, closer domain.

Honestly, I wouldn't go to the domain where I have zero knowledge or/and experience.

I have a generally philosophy...
Solve problems other companies are attempting to solve in new ways (faster, better, cheaper)

An alternative suggestion, use ChatGPT.

Write
"Write problems that [insert company] solves"

Example companies:
Uber
AirBnB
WeWork
Dropbox
Trello

Take one of those problems and work from there

Great question! As a software engineer, you have a valuable skill set that you can use to identify problems and create solutions. Here are a few ways you can start to find problems to solve:

1. Look for inefficiencies: One way to find problems to solve is to look for inefficiencies in existing processes. For example, if you're interested in accounting, you might look for tasks that are repetitive or time-consuming and could potentially be automated.

2. Talk to potential users: Another way to identify problems is to talk to people who work in the field you're interested in. You could reach out to accountants or accounting firms and ask them about their pain points, what tasks they find most challenging, and what tools or software they use.

3. Conduct market research: You can also conduct market research to identify gaps in the market or areas where existing solutions fall short. Look at reviews of existing products, pay attention to what people are saying on social media, and study the competition to see where there might be room for improvement.

4. Look for emerging trends: Keep up to date with the latest trends and developments in the industry you're interested in. Look for areas where there might be growth opportunities, or where existing solutions might become outdated.

By using a combination of these methods, you can start to identify pain points and potential problems that you can use your software engineering skills to solve. Remember, the best ideas often come from solving problems that you or people close to you have experienced, so don't be afraid to start with what you know!

You can find ideas by identifying the problems that you have faced, that you think others may be facing, or others might have told you that they face. In either of the scenarios, talk to more and more people from the target group (who you think face the problem) without leading them - You will get deeper insights and will be much closer to identifying the problem. - This is the user research part to starting up or building things

Another great idea is to look at what people are solving and try to solve it in a better way.

As advised in the above comments, it'd be helpful to follow trends and build opinions.

But if you do not have domain knowledge, how do you expect to solve a problem? You also should need domain knowledge to solve the problem, because else you end with an app that is totally horrible, like many business apps are where developers and project managers made assumptions because they didn't have domain knowledge

The reality of the situation is that you're unlikely to pick a good problem to tackle if you don't understand the space well. In fact, if you already have expertise in software engineering, this may be a great problem space to start exploring. Think about the problems you and your team run into each day and see if there's anything there that peaks your interest.

If you're interested in building for a particular industry (i.e. accounting) but you don't have much domain knowledge, you can learn enough to understand the problem space quicker than you think. Join some accounting communities and reach out to a few accountants to schedule some interviews. Ask them about their day-to-day work and what problems they run into that they would gladly pay for a solution to. Listen in to these communities to discover what questions are asked over and over or what complaints people raise frequently. With a little research, you'll find an interesting problem to solve in no time.