I'd love your suggestions - BAD product ideas
Hi everyone, this post is a little bit of a request to all the IHers here. I'm still relatively new to IH, so I don't know if something like this has been posted before...
Since I discovered the 'no code' movement a month ago or so, I've been really into thinking about what I can build without having a coding background. I've been playing a lot with things like carrd, twilio, zapier, airtable, shopify, and a few others. So far, I've come up with a few ideas that seem unique, and seem to compliment my analytics background. However, the more progress I make, the less feasible they seem. I feel like I'm getting too hung up on them rather than just 'building' stuff.
On the other hand, when I think about things I know I can build, I feel like a lot of those things are already being built, many built by people with coding background that can probably build a better version than I could.
The other night, I came up with an idea. Since everyone seems to be building good products that benefit people, I thought about doing the opposite. What If, for fun, I just tried to build products that are functional, but would do things people wouldn't like? IE. Sign up, and get 10 emails a day about a topic that is of no interest to you.
I wouldn't get hung up on feeling like 'there are plenty of other people building a better version of this than I can', and it may provide some interesting/funny insights on human behavior. I'm hoping this could provide a little bit of entertainment for the IH community as well.
I'll still work on my ideas that I think are good, but I'm thinking of taking the @levelsio approach of building a BAD product every month/few weeks, and just try to get a handful of them done and see what happens. I want to get in the rhythm of getting a few products completed.
So the request for you is, what is an app/product that you wouldn't like? What would be an inconvenience? Any products that would be a punishment to you? Any and all bad ideas are welcome.
Thanks.
You are procrastinating in three different ways.
A good idea for you is to understand what is blocking you from building and launching things that you want.
I appreciate the direct feedback Luqa. A few things...
I'm still learning about no code tools so maybe I'll come across a solution, but if you know of any no code tools that allow you to go through a checkout process and pay for something automatically, please share. I'm currently talking to shopify, zapier, and quickbooks to figure out if that's possible. I haven't found anything that does that...at least not yet.
Failing is not something I'm worried about. I'm worried more about stagnation. Everyday, I'm continually trying to figure out how to improve and build the main idea I have, but sometimes when I get stuck and frustrated on anything, I like to change things up and make my brain work different. This often helps me see things differently, and make progress on everything I'm working on.
Even though I agree that building 'bad' products isn't going to be successful, sometimes the insights that come out of them are beneficial. Besides, 10-15 years ago, the thought of products like online dating and Uber were terrible ideas. Not that I expect anything I build to get to those levels, but good things can result from bad 'ideas'
Maybe IFTTT can help, I never played with payments in my no-code experience.
I am similar to you. When it's time to do the tedious and frustrating things, my mind wonders and start thinking about new ideas. Maybe you are right and in your case it can help see things from another perspective. In my case it didn't help, because even with new projects there is a time when the enthusiasm goes away and you need to face that frustration again.
Regarding uber and online dating, i wouldn't consider then bad but extremely hard to pull off. On a ted talk, Travis Kalanick said that an uber "ancestor" was born in the 1930' and worked so well that automobile companies pressured the Us government to make it illegal. Online dating is based on a human need. The hard part is to make people trust it and win the perception that it is for nerds but the product itself is good.
If you truly believe that you can learn something pursuing bad ideas go for it but I believe you could learn more from the launch of a product that has its competitors.
Just browsing through IFTTT quickly now...looks cool, thanks for the suggestion. I'll also try to find that ted walk.
And I agree, the frustration between different things is a balance. The last thing I want to have happen is to not make progress on anything. We'll see how this goes. I'll post more on it as I go.
A web tracking tool that rewards you for procrastinating.
A pizza gifting app that sends a pizza to a random street address in a different city (but you pay for it)
A tool that lets people schedule time to come pet your dog.
A chat tool that sends your message to a friend, but in a different language that's random every time.
An app like Acorns, but instead of saving or investing your money, it buys something random off of Amazon whenever there's enough money in the account
These are great, Thanks Andrew!
An app that randomly sets your shopify prices at checkout.
A twilio and calendar mashup to text/call spam yourself during meetings.
An app that randomly removes calendar alerts and moves appointments to wrong days.
A tie in to your analytics background: an useless analytics app. Gives you stats like like total number of people in the world who didn’t visit our site. Use real population data to make the stat live/dynamic.
Awesome ideas, thank you!