How do you get ideas for your side projects or any thing interested?
Speaking just for myself here:
It's a combination of curiosity and naivety. You know that kiddy question where someone's going "But WHY do it that way?!" That's me. Not on the outside, granted - but it's the same sort of impulse.
Of course, as you get older, you start to learn a lot of the 'whys,' and some of them are sensible. The outstanding 'whys' for your day to day life tend to get resolved to a level that allows you to function one way or another. More precisely, however, they're sensible within a specific context defined by the knowledge and assumptions that the parties involved bring to the table and the limits of the requirements they have for their answers.
So I read, I watch visually interesting films, I listen to talks of people who have interesting thoughts, I learn arts crafts and trades outside of my own to a reasonably functional level - (not quite to the level of making an artistry out of them but to the level where you can perceive why that person's good and you're not and some of the things you'd need to do to approach them.) I try to have a wide context to compare the answers to those 'why' questions to. Because what's sensible in one context isn't in another.
There are other skills involved. There are bits of knowledge that are general tools. For instance maths, formal logic - I'd be inclined to suggest a surprising amount of the study of workflows (not just in a user interface sense) is worth looking at because that's often generally applicable to the why of things, etc.
I digress: The majority of the 'why' questions have sensible answers. The world would not function acceptably otherwise. That's fine from the perspective of intellectual exploration. If you're wrong you get an answer that will let you ask more 'why' questions, and if you're right you get another answer - difficult to lose with those outcomes.
Every so often a 'why' comes along where the answer doesn't make sense in the context that you've got, and then you've got an idea that's worth trying out. Seeing whether you can take the thing from that other context and put it in the context that seems wrong. Take one concept from one place and use it here instead. That just seems natural when it happens. Ideas seem like it's the other people who've gone off into crazy land, or missed something. For me, it's the same feeling from when I was little and the parents would go 'BECAUSE! Now I've got to go to work!'
And if that idea comes to nothing, no biggy. There'll be another idea along in a little bit.
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I'd reiterate I'm speaking just for myself there. It's a thing that seems to work for me, it may not be the optimal thing and it may not work that well or that way for others.
Comments
Speaking just for myself here:
It's a combination of curiosity and naivety. You know that kiddy question where someone's going "But WHY do it that way?!" That's me. Not on the outside, granted - but it's the same sort of impulse.
Of course, as you get older, you start to learn a lot of the 'whys,' and some of them are sensible. The outstanding 'whys' for your day to day life tend to get resolved to a level that allows you to function one way or another. More precisely, however, they're sensible within a specific context defined by the knowledge and assumptions that the parties involved bring to the table and the limits of the requirements they have for their answers.
So I read, I watch visually interesting films, I listen to talks of people who have interesting thoughts, I learn arts crafts and trades outside of my own to a reasonably functional level - (not quite to the level of making an artistry out of them but to the level where you can perceive why that person's good and you're not and some of the things you'd need to do to approach them.) I try to have a wide context to compare the answers to those 'why' questions to. Because what's sensible in one context isn't in another.
There are other skills involved. There are bits of knowledge that are general tools. For instance maths, formal logic - I'd be inclined to suggest a surprising amount of the study of workflows (not just in a user interface sense) is worth looking at because that's often generally applicable to the why of things, etc.
I digress: The majority of the 'why' questions have sensible answers. The world would not function acceptably otherwise. That's fine from the perspective of intellectual exploration. If you're wrong you get an answer that will let you ask more 'why' questions, and if you're right you get another answer - difficult to lose with those outcomes.
Every so often a 'why' comes along where the answer doesn't make sense in the context that you've got, and then you've got an idea that's worth trying out. Seeing whether you can take the thing from that other context and put it in the context that seems wrong. Take one concept from one place and use it here instead. That just seems natural when it happens. Ideas seem like it's the other people who've gone off into crazy land, or missed something. For me, it's the same feeling from when I was little and the parents would go 'BECAUSE! Now I've got to go to work!'
And if that idea comes to nothing, no biggy. There'll be another idea along in a little bit.
---
I'd reiterate I'm speaking just for myself there. It's a thing that seems to work for me, it may not be the optimal thing and it may not work that well or that way for others.