If you want to learn
Collide with another person.
I don’t mean smash your car into them, though I guess you could learn a lot by doing that, too.
I mean, take your ideas out of your head and into the world. Not only will you learn if you’re right and wrong, you’ll learn questions you didn’t even know to ask.
For example, my small team is working on a prototype to assist in the creation of highly productive teams. We spent a week going through the Google Ventures Design Sprint model and coming up with a prototype.
Today we did our first interviews. Some of our ideas were spot on, and some were off the mark. But what I loved most of all are the discussions we had with our customers.
My favorite question turned out to be, “when I click this button, what do you expect will happen?” And a variation, “...what do you expect to see on the next screen?”
These questions led to incredible insights and perspectives we didn’t consider.
I’m not suggesting you let the interview determine the product, just that you’ll discover much more about your customers, your product, and even yourself, when you get out of your head and into the real world.
Good luck out there!!