Being a developer starts with a lot of small personal projects built alone in small teams that allow you to level up your skills and prove your knowledge. One of the biggest difficulties in this is coming up with a unique, but the valuable idea of what to build.

Over my time as a developer I have built a range of varying products and projects and my ideas have come about in all different ways, here’s one of the most effective…

Other experiences

I have spent years before now with many different hobbies, interests, responsibilities and more; through this, I have built an understanding of the ways these things work and the difficulties they carry with them.

Since learning to code and becoming a developer, I have taken the time both subconsciously and purposefully to think about the flaws in other industries I have experience in.

Nobody puts it better than Shubham in this tweet:

Identifying these flaws has allowed me to locate the gaps in the market that would not only be great to see filled but would be appreciated and used by the target market.

Why not just any industry?

You may be thinking, well why only industries you have experience in? Why not build anything?

The industries you have experience in are the ones you know best, you can best identify the flaws here and at the end of the day, you’re then a potential user for your product, allowing you to see where and why your product may be failing, something imperative for anyone building a product.

If you’ve worked in a restaurant you know what difficulties your restaurant faced, so fix those issues with a digital tool - don’t build an app to teach people to cook if you’ve never set foot in a kitchen!

Write it down

Make a note of every idea you have or every issue you notice needs a solution. An idea that’s not written down is bound to be forgotten - not particularly useful when you go to build something later on!

Writing ideas down also allows you to make notes around them, expand on the idea and evolve the product. Going straight to building with no plan on what the product will offer at launch is what will cause your app to crash and burn before it makes it to production. Not only that but if the app does make it to production, it’s going to be less likely to solve the issues you’ve recognised and therefore it’ll be much more difficult to sell to potential users as they won’t see the value.

Create more ideas

Knowing how to come up with better ideas is only the start. Coming up with them is a further step. But bringing them to life - that is what makes an amazing idea.

Your ideas are wasted sitting incomplete in your notes so go out in the world and make them a reality!