Talk about your ideas publicly

Good ideas are all well and good, but if you keep them bottled up in your noggin then there they will stay until one day your brain needs the space for an episode of Game of Thrones or to remember your Nan’s birthday.

If you have a good concept, you need to test it, and the fastest and simplest way to do that is to talk about it.

Now it’s important to vet your idea by running it through your common sense, it’s been done before and not safe for work filters, to make sure you haven’t reinvented, the flux capacitor, the wheel or the Lovebot 3000 (…especially if you didn’t mean to.)

Once your logic, legal and moral rights have been cleared, it’s time to take your idea out of the box and let other people play with it.

Now obviously you’re going to need to get a few things straight first. You have to realise that people have limitations and some have other motivations, so just be clear before you start what you’re hoping to achieve by opening up your ideas to debate. If you’ve got one of those naysayer friends whose glass is not only always half full, but sometimes chipped as well, then you’re unlikely to get anything positive out of them, but that doesn’t mean their advice isn’t valuable. People with negative outlooks can often see downsides in our ‘perfect’ products that we can’t see through our rose-tinted shades. Similarly, you’re unlikely to get anything constructive from the kind of friend who thinks the sun shines out your proverbial, but that doesn’t mean they can’t see the clever little widget that you nearly overlooked.

Of course, the more open and honest a person is the better the feedback is going to be, and while there might be a shady super nemesis waiting in the wings to steal your thunder, you’re still more likely to be killed in a shark attack.

If you do open the door to your idea, it gives you the chance to prove your idea is better than cutting the bread into thin strips.

If you don’t challenge your ideas, then that’s all they will ever be, and you’ll never get to pull your brand new prototype out of the box and gaze admiringly at it.

When you talk about your concepts with the right audience, two things can happen. One, you’ll be able to defend your idea and explain it and two, you’ll be able to adapt your idea and change it to solve problems brought up in the debate. Collaboration is one of the most critical stages of designing a product, and it’s something we can all do and without the need to spend a penny.

So get talking and get going. It is, of course, an art all of its own and if I’m honest I tend to share my ideas a little too regularly, leading to concept fatigue amongst my co-workers, but I’m not going to let a little bit of enthusiasm stop me from getting my ideas out there.

Anyway enough about me … what special ways do you have for getting your ideas across?

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