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!

[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?