[ktharavaad]

When I'm presented with a project (by myself or someone else), my thought flow is usually like this:

1, Is this project interesting to me? I usually trust my gut on this one and what I'm interested on is temporally-variant. I can only apply my self 100% to things I find an interest in.

2, What is the market viability of this project? I do a bit googling around to see if there are any existing implementations of this product. I try to think of usage scenarios and I will google for communities who might need this product, read about what they have to say and find out more about their needs so that the implementation of the product can be geared towards them.

Even if a product has 0 market-demand, I might still work on it because of step (1) and I simply treat it as a learning experience ( such is the case of kpicturebooth.com ).

3, I work out the logistics - can I work on this on my own ? - if the project was presented to me by someone else, what is the team like? - how long will it take, can I fit it into my school schedule?

If I deem the project infeasible, I might try to work on one part at a time or get people to help me.

[rs]

On your point 2, the one thing that I would add is to:

1. Try out the existing implementation (a little gap analysis with your idea)

2. Even though analysis from (1) above does not come out with much pros, the project might still be a viable one, depending on the effort needed

[chris11]

I've been thinking about starting a side project as a learning experience. So what are the ideas and knowledge that you have found most helpful in your current projects? I think having goals about what I wanted to learn would be more beneficial than just doing something, so I'm wondering what all of you want to learn in your businesses/startups.

[ktharavaad]

>>> what are the ideas and knowledge that you have found most helpful in your current projects <<<

This is kind of a broad question.

For ideas, I usually look at the usual sources for inspiration such as my favorite applications. One of my favorite things to do is to read academic journals and try to implement some of the algorithms in a way that can be used by consumers.

>>> what I wanted to learn would be more beneficial than just doing something <<<

Well, to me this is a trade off.

If I just want to "learn things", I'd probably spend all my time in MATLAB experimenting with interesting code snippets that no one else in the world will see or use. ( I would also apply to grad school... something which I'm trying to avoid at this point ).

On the other end of the spectrum, I don't want to be one of those "web developers" who spends all their time writing the same "to-do-list" or "my own blog system" in some cool new language.

In the end, I think there needs to be a balance of challenge and practicality of the projects which I work on. It has to be technically challenging enough to keep me interested and yet it has to have some practical value so that at the end of the day, I have something to show for it. =)