Whats Your IQ

I started What’s Your IQ after noticing how often IQ tests are misunderstood online.

Most people encounter IQ tests as either clickbait (“find out if you’re a genius”) or overly simplified quizzes that give a number without any explanation. On the other end of the spectrum, there are professional assessments that are inaccessible to most people. There seemed to be a gap between these two extremes.

The idea behind this project was simple:
create a lightweight, transparent way to explore reasoning and pattern-based thinking, while being honest about what IQ tests can and cannot measure.

What I’m trying to do differently

From the beginning, I made a few decisions that shaped the project:

• Avoid treating IQ as a label or identity

• Focus on reasoning, patterns, and problem-solving rather than trivia

• Be explicit about limitations and avoid clinical or diagnostic claims

• Keep the experience simple and accessible in the browser

This meant resisting a lot of common “growth hacks” that are tempting when building tools in this space. It’s very easy to overpromise here, and I didn’t want to do that.

The hardest part so far

The hardest part hasn’t been the technical side. It’s been finding the right balance between simplicity and meaning.

If the questions are too easy, the test becomes pointless.
If they’re too hard or too long, people disengage.
If results are shown without context, they get misinterpreted.

A lot of iteration went into question structure, timing, and result explanations. I’ve learned that even small wording changes can drastically affect how people perceive their score.

Unexpected lessons

One thing that surprised me is how emotional people can be about intelligence measurement. Even when you clearly state that the tool is exploratory, not diagnostic, users still project expectations onto it.

That reinforced something important for me:
how you communicate limits matters as much as the tool itself.

This has influenced how I write content, design result pages, and think about future features.

What’s next

Right now, the focus is on:

• Improving clarity around results

• Making explanations more educational

• Continuing to refine question quality

Longer term, I’m interested in exploring:

• Better visual explanations of cognitive concepts

• Showing how different cognitive skills relate to each other

• Helping users understand why they performed the way they did

Why I’m sharing this here

I wanted to share this on Indie Hackers because the mindset here resonates with how I’m approaching the project: building slowly, learning publicly, and prioritizing long-term value over quick wins.

If you’ve built tools around education, psychology, or anything people emotionally identify with, I’d love to hear:

• What did you get wrong at first?

• What helped users understand your product better?

• What would you do differently now?

Thanks for reading and happy to answer any questions or learn from your feedback.