Show HN: MonsterLumen helps you brainstorm business problems

[ssebro]

Hi Hn,

A buddy and I worked on this prototype to see if we could design a system that helps people think creatively. I'd love your feedback, tips and pointers - and yes, I know it's a bit ugly (much css work to be done).

Check it out at beta.monsterlumen.com and let us know what you think!

[mneumegen]

I like the idea although it definitely needs a bit more work. I used the nudge a few times out of curiosity a got a question that I wasn't interested in answering but there was no way of exiting the dialog. I think a bit more instruction on what is happening and an indication of how far through the process I am would have been helpful.

If you're planning to charge people for the service you might want to have a think about who your target market is and how you will make money. I see MonsterLumen as an educational tool that teaches you skills and techniques to think outside the box, once I've got those skills I don't need your app anymore so just consider that when you're coming up with pricing.

[ssebro]

Great feedback. You can press esc to exit the nudge dialog - we purposefully made it hard to exit because we wanted people to engage in seemingly silly questions, because in our experience, that's when you have breakthroughs. As an aside, we've also noticed that the tool doesn't work unless you have a legitimate problem that you care about and are trying to solve - made up problems just don't cut it.

I agree that we could do better at communicating progress and more about the process - I think this is one of the major things we need to work on.

We're not thinking about charging for it right now, it's just a proof of concept to answer the question "Can software make someone more creative"?

We're not worried about people leaving and applying the skills elsewhere, since what we've seen in practice is people who've paid thousands of dollars to learn these skills revert to their old habits once real problems pop up.

Thanks a lot for giving it a shot, and for your feedback!

[soneca]

I used it for a real problem and I loved the idea and how simply is built. But I used alone, while I still considering try it with my team, I just didn't feel very compelled to send invitations. I use Asana, if this was a tool of their product, with all my teammates there, our taks and projects listed, and people already in the "let's talk about business" mood, I would certainly use it.

I don't see it as a tool to teach you "creative skills", not at all! I see as a good brainstorming tool. A good, simple one. The main advantage to real meetings brainstorming sessions is that this is asynchronous, your team doesn't have to be all together at the same time. You may just say "let's brainstorm this through the next 3 days, and friday we decide what to do". And I liked the 2 nudges I got very much! And I like that is not that easy to skip.

But, as a web app alone, with very poor social resources, it lost all its appeal. Something that I think would make it great is to allow all communication to be made through email (just as Basecamp and Asana do). But if everything is via email, then it may be very powerfull. But you have to create a great UX with added value, because one can simply create a email, copy 3 teammates and start a brainstorming thread. How to introduce the nudges, a good organization of topics and ideas, an easy to upvote good ideas maybe, etc; that would be hard to do through this email communication.

Well, I think the concept is great, I hope you can make a good product out of it.

[_lex]

Hi Soneca - thanks for your feedback and for giving it a shot.

I think your hesitation about sharing may be linked to the fact that sharing the brainstorm feels like it's real-time, so to share with your coworkers would involve breaking their flow and dragging them into your current brainstorm. That explanation seems to fit with you not wanting to change the mood - am I correct in this assumption?

I'm really glad you liked your nudges - we were initially not sure people would "get" them. We're a little worried about async brainstorming, because a lot of the real value from brainstorming comes from stealing your coworkers' ideas and building on them - so you make their ideas better. Async makes this more difficult.

I love your idea about email being the conduit. I think i'd like to build on that :), and that with tools like mailgun, it's not going to be terribly hard. Thanks a lot for this 3rd paragraph - a lot of actionable ideas here.

Thanks for your support - we hope to make it into something awesome too :).

[soneca]

Your first assumption is partially correct. But I think the problem is there are two invitations at a time: i) please join me at my brainstorming and ii) please use this tool for it.

The invitation i) is inherent of the purpouse, altough is totally acceptable only with coworkers. If I want to brainstorm a startup idea with random friends, this invitation may bother my friends - even if they get that they don't need to answer immediately.

The invitation ii) is not inherent, is marketing. It is a barrier to share. You must have good, cool, smart way to introduce the invited people to the tool. Your copywriting will make a lot of differencehere.

You can note that both problems are solved if the tool is already a feature inside a team management tool - only coworkers and using a tool they already know.

ABout the nudges, I guess you have to find just the right time to use them, and also work hard in making it attractive to users, so they want to "play with it".

And about the "async", actually I used the word wrongly. What I am, the tool must keep the chronological order of a brainstorm, in order to one improve each other idea. But the advantage here is that it allows people do it remotely and free from a time restriction. I will read all the ideas there are coming, but I will send mine whenever I choose to. It still a conversation, but it allows more intermissions than a face-to-face meeting.

[_lex]

Interesting.

We're targeting business problems and coworkers since workers have better incentives to contribute (compared to friends), and businesses can see tangible cash value from being more creative.

The thought was that if a coworker sent you an invite/email saying - "I want your ideas on this", it'd be hard for you to not contribute. But I'm hearing that it breaks the work flow too much to expect people to leave email and their current task management tool to use our tool whenever they want to brainstorm. Is that because it feels like they're spamming their friends/coworkers, or because their friends/coworkers don't necessarily want to learn to use another gadget/app? Would it be different if we emailed your coworkers on your behalf saying "soneca just brainstormed x" - want to add your ideas and help her?

I think integrating into a team management tool is a great idea - or maybe directly into gmail like streak (www.streak.com).

Async definitely was what we were going for - busy people want to brainstorm with you and contribute ideas, but it's impossible to get 5 of them in a room at the same time. MonsterLumen should help with that.

[ssebro]

The URL is http://beta.monsterlumen.com, and I'll be sticking around in the comments to get your feedback!

[sixQuarks]

you want me to be honest? This feels like a feature to me, not a business. Very hard to get traction with something like this.

[ssebro]

Most definitely - we love honesty. Can you flesh out your comment a little? I think most businesses have problems getting traction to start out - what specific challenges are you seeing?

[sixQuarks]

well, that's the problem. Getting traction is going to be very difficult with this. You're expecting people to find, or remember this site next time they need to brainstorm something. It's basically a stand-alone "feature".

Marketing is difficult, but more importantly, getting visitors to stick is going to be extremely difficult.

If, on the other hand, you do something bigger, such as create a brainstorming resource site with tips, tricks, and all sorts of useful stuff that will attract visitors - this could be a nice feature to add to that site.

[_lex]

I think we were also thinking of it as a platform for community thought. Imagine embedding a brainstorm widget at the end of your blog article to get ideas for a problem your company is solving.

[_lex]

What did you think of soneca's suggestion of essentially having a widget that lives in popular project management apps / gmail, that provides this functionality at the click of a button?