Posted in: Sparks Ideas, connecting the dots
By Ryan Singer • 28 Jul 2021
I'm experimenting with ways to demonstrate the path from a raw idea to a well-shaped pitch. That is, how to go from "I think we should spend time on X" to "here's a specific concept for X that we're confident we can ship in six weeks."
Sometimes I have a clear concept in my head from the very beginning, and I just need to sketch it out and write it up. Other times, it's more of a struggle. A project I just finished was one of those harder cases.
To get through it, instead of just staring at a blank page, I opened up a Miro board. My idea was to externalize my thought process by making small steps in a horizontal chain.
Along the way, I reached for a handful of small shaping tools. They allowed me to show steps that I would have otherwise done on a whiteboard or in my head. Some of them are from Shape Up (like fat marker sketching). Others are techniques I learned from Bob Moesta and Greg Engle at Re-Wired.
Tools used:
This post will give you a tour of these tools and show how I used them to shape a real project.
The project
This project is one of the final cycles of an app I'm building with Bob and Greg to analyze and cluster demand-side interview data. Here's a screenshot of the work in progress:
