Problem Pad

Fellow Indiehackers, I'm excited to announce the launch of my MVP, Problem Pad, a project based on finding and solving problems!

The goal of this project is to have a space dedicated to uncovering the problems that are being faced by creators, businesses or consumers and riff on ideas to try and solve them.

That's the elevator pitch, I'll go a bit deeper and discuss two of the most important parts of this project which are Mental Frameworks and Effective Brainstorming

Mental Frameworks

I started thinking about better ways to problem solve and generate ideas after reading the Medici Effect by Frans Johansson. It talks mostly about one mental framework of idea generation which is intersectional thinking. Utilizing the knowledge from one industry and applying it to solving a problem in another is the basis of this mental framework. After this I started looking into other mental frameworks for coming up with ideas and solving problems. I found a lot of great resources and have been using them constantly in my own life to think deeper about problems and ideas.

With Problem Pad, one of the goals is to provide these frameworks as tools to analyze the problems that are being submitted and understand them more deeply. If we can see them from these different lenses, we can come up with better ideas to solve them. It also helps us to focus on the real problems and not fall into the trap of coming up with ideas that aren't solving a worthwhile problem.

These are posted in the frameworks section of the site and I want to encourage everyone to add the frameworks they currently use to this in the comments section on Problem Pad:
Frameworks for finding and solving problems

Once we have these mental frameworks as tools to analyze the problems in a thoughtful way, the next catalyst to better ideas is brainstorming effectively.

Brainstorming Effectively

Brainstorming is a great approach to coming up with creative ideas but it needs to be done right to be effective. When you see brainstorming take place in a meeting whether physical or online, it doesn't always work very well. Some people are fearful to share their ideas in these types of brainstorms because they may feel their idea is dumb and that they'll be judged harshly. On top of that, when we have to wait for others to speak, it hinders our ability to keep track of our own ideas which is a crucial point I'll explain next.

In the Medici Effect, Frans talks about how researchers Michael Diehl and Wolfgang Stroebe set out to determine whether a "real" brainstorming group where individuals brainstormed at the same time (like in a office setting or online meeting room) was superior to "virtual" brainstorming groups where individuals independently brainstormed ideas. They found that every time, the group that brainstormed individually yielded the most productive results (more ideas and more creative ones). Other experiments by psychologists around the world also reached the same conclusion. They then set out to find what the underlying reason for this discrepancy in performance was attributed to. Why were people brainstorming better ideas on their own? It turns out the main factor was a phenomenon known as "blocking." It turns out humans suck as managing their short-term memory storage. Frans explains "Our short-term memory is not capable of developing new ideas and at the same time keeping the old ones in active storage." This blocking occurs when we're listening to other people's ideas, while also trying to develop new ones and at the same time trying to hold on to the ones we've already thought of. All this happens while waiting for our turn to speak, at which point we forget a lot of what we were thinking about.

So how can we effectively brainstorm ideas without these issues? The researchers suggested a practice called Brainwriting. In Brainwriting, everyone writes down ideas for a problem and throws the paper into the middle for others to pick up, read the ideas and build on those ideas, then throw it back in the pile. How do we replicate this online? Well it's been staring us right in the face. The comments section!

I feel a comments section is extremely well suited for people to build on each others ideas and thoughts. I've seen it happen over and over again on Indie Hackers and other communities where thoughtful responses are encouraged. We can think critically about the problem on our own, then view the existing ideas in the comments and build on them to come up with better ideas. That's why the comments section for every post on Problem Pad is labeled "Comments & Ideas."

Next Steps

The format I'm testing out for this project is a blog style setup that anyone can publish on. If you have a problem you want to talk about and get insights/ideas from others, you can post it and publish it right away. Or if you have seen a problem that others are facing, you can elaborate on it and post it no matter how short or in-depth. The amount of research you do isn't the key here, it's more about getting the problem out there so others know it exists. And of course the magic happens in the comments. I'm going to see how this goes for now and am looking to iterate as I get feedback from users.

My hope is that this project can improve our ability to talk about problems in public and collaboratively think up creative solutions that are tough to come by when we think alone.

I would appreciate everyone's thoughts on this project and encourage you to go and post a problem that interests you or you're currently facing.

Thanks for reading!

After spending the first month of quarantine making a polling app that no one was ever going to use, I realized I needed some better ideas to work on. I decided to read the Medici Effect (Good book) to get some inspiration and it got me thinking of how I can get creators and other entrepreneurs to talk about the problems they were facing or had discovered in the marketplace. Then apply some of the principles from that book and other frameworks of innovation to come up with solutions alongside others.

For now the name is Problem Pad and it's intent is to create a community around discovering problems and applying frameworks to brainstorm potential solutions in a open forum where anyone can take part.