why the best ideas come from solving your own annoying problems

You can't build solutions for problems you've never felt.

I mean, you can try. People do it all the time. They research markets, interview users, build elaborate personas. But the products that come out of that process always feel off. Like someone designed them from a distance.

The best ideas don't come from market research. They come from being personally annoyed by something and finally deciding to fix it.

experiencing the problem

I was building a platformer earlier this year. Two weeks in, I was still fighting with assets and boilerplate code instead of actually designing the game. That frustration lived with me.

(Still working on it by the way. DM me on Twitter @whosjunaidd if you want to play an early version. It's janky but it's fun.)

In May, I went to Shanghai for a game conference. Talked to indie developers and small studios. Everyone had the same complaints. Development takes forever. Hiring teams is expensive. The tools that exist don't actually fit how game dev works.

Hearing other people say it out loud just confirmed what I was already feeling.

So I started building Vector. This isn't an ad, just using it as an example. It's a tool built on Godot that helps with code and asset generation. Built it because I needed it.

here's the thing:

Vector only exists because I was in the middle of the problem. Actually stuck. Actually frustrated. If I had just heard about game dev being slow without experiencing it myself, I would've built something useless.

You need to live inside the problem to understand what the solution actually looks like.

the pattern:

Every project I've built that mattered came from personal frustration. The projects that failed? Those were the ones where I thought something sounded like a good idea but I wasn't actually living the problem.

You can't fake that understanding. You either feel it or you don't.

so before you build:

Ask yourself if you're actually experiencing this problem right now. Not theoretically. Not because you heard someone else complain about it. Right now, today, is this thing making your life harder?

If the answer is no, you're probably not the right person to build the solution. Or you need to go live inside the problem first.

The best ideas come from being in the middle of something frustrating and thinking "there has to be a better way." Then building that better way. For yourself. And seeing if anyone else needs it too.

Thanks for reading