HN: Name a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve • Hacker News Board

Re: HN: Name a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve

#61

Post by dshanahan » Tue, Mar 27, 2012, 4:38 AM UTC

unimpressive wrote: post #46

1.) The average computer users fear of their own computer. It hurts me on a deep level (Deeper than just seeing a business opportunity.) to see the bicycle for the mind being marginalized in it's potential by people trying to sell things. (Microsoft, IBM, and co. Have probably done permanent damage to humanity by spreading the meme that computer knowledge is for 'nerds'. Whatever those are.) As we move further into t…

Really like this post; articulating something I experience and something I see a TON of entrepreneurs quietly struggle with.

I share your intuition that it's not entirely a machine-ready problem; productivity tools (using that term WIDELY) have certainly improved, corrected in innovative ways for all of our typical human tendencies, and in some cases work really well for "some" people.

I've been consulting lately on a project focused on providing human coaching to this specific problem for big-thinking tech entrepreneurs. Also definitely not for everyone, but after chatting with a number of investors about how they might 'enhance' their influence on their portfolio founders, this was something that always seems to be a "lightbulb". It's most surprised me that entrepreneurs themselves seem to be very much interested in the idea: "Yes, if my investors provided me with a productivity/well-being coach I'd take full advantage".

Thoughts?

Re: HN: Name a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve

#62

Post by DanBC » Tue, Mar 27, 2012, 4:47 AM UTC

Here's a tiny thing:

The UK uses the concept of "units" for public health when talking about alcohol. These aren't well understood. There's concern about binge drinking. But there's also concern about non-typical groups.

Make a little web-app game. Display a variety of glasses, and wine bottles. Include the ABV (alcohol by volume) rating. "pour" a glass of wine. tell the user how many mls are in the glass. (125 ml at 8%ABV is one unit. It's rare to see glasses that small, they're normally 175 ml or 250 ml. And wine is usually much stronger.) Then ask them how many units are in that glass. Give them a score. (and show them how much of that glass is just one unit) Repeat for 5 glasses. Show them the difference between what they guessed and true. Link to some alcohol awareness sites.

"Drinking "just a little more than they should" puts people at risk of serious illness including heart disease, stroke and cancer, the government is warning." http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16869618

Nice chart: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Units_of_alcohol_char...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-16886547

Young people, especially women, with alcohol related illness. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7092347.stm

Rise in Cirrhosis. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17513505

Baffling numbers. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3303805.stm

Record numbers. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13559455

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16443240

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15114325

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4581530.stm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-15997695

Re: HN: Name a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve

#63

Post by dshanahan » Tue, Mar 27, 2012, 4:49 AM UTC

the_watcher wrote: post #55

stdbrouw wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solving a problem is often about finding the right approach / fudging the problem into something you can solve. And there is actually a disruptive solution to this: online shopping. Amazon has cheese cloth.

The problem is that it was a spur of the moment decision to try to make ricotta, needed it then and there. Amazon solves this if you regularly need cheese cloth, but not if you have never heard of it and all of sudden find out you need it that night.

This is a problem we've assessed a bit at http://foodtree.com - there are some efforts in this space but none seem to have the penetration to make it useful at scale. Our approach is to help grocers "spread their great story" as an incentive to start mapping their inventory, both in the "where it's from/who made it and how" perspective and the "what store near me has OBSCUREITEM available right now" perspective, which is your problem but only to store level. Getting to that level right now is tough with food retail chains, but they're moving in the right direction.

So that we don't have to wait for them, we're trying to enable crowd-sourcing as well; "I saw OBSCUREITEM here in case you're looking for it in town".

Again, very aware this is only your problem at the store's front door, but maybe it's nice to know someone's working on it? :)

Re: HN: Name a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve

#64

Post by aDemoUzer » Tue, Mar 27, 2012, 4:53 AM UTC

PaperclipTaken wrote: post #24

Fluid/continuous education. For the first two weeks of my junior year of high school, I was learning the same version of the scientific method in 3 classes. I learned it again in two different classes my senior year of high school. I would like to see education that is based on a knowledge map so that a person never needs to learn something that they already know.

my opinion on re-learning - there were multiple subjects that I took in college which went over same content that I had learned in High School. I actually enjoyed re-learning them because the content was presented in a different way, so it made more sense to me that it had before. It is one thing to learn something once, but when I learn some concept over and over again, I tend to discover something new about it or related to it. Even small concepts can have greater meaning to it that I did not saw at first.

I have similar experience with movies - Dark Knight - I watched it 4 times and each time I find it more fascinating because I saw new details in the movie.

Re: HN: Name a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve

#65

Post by unimpressive » Tue, Mar 27, 2012, 5:05 AM UTC

dshanahan wrote: post #61

unimpressive wrote: post #46

1.) The average computer users fear of their own computer. It hurts me on a deep level (Deeper than just seeing a business opportunity.) to see the bicycle for the mind being marginalized in it's potential by people trying to sell things. (Microsoft, IBM, and co. Have probably done permanent damage to humanity by spreading the meme that computer knowledge is for 'nerds'. Whatever those are.) As we move further into t…

Really like this post; articulating something I experience and something I see a TON of entrepreneurs quietly struggle with. I share your intuition that it's not entirely a machine-ready problem; productivity tools (using that term WIDELY) have certainly improved, corrected in innovative ways for all of our typical human tendencies, and in some cases work really well for "some" people. I've been consulting lately on…

I'm far too young to be of any help demoing products for entrepreneurs. However, I think that this and other problems are near or on what I like to call the "Deviation barrier.".

Basically it goes like this: Theres certain problems that seem solvable from your perspective, but the real problem is that the way in which the problem manifests itself deviates largely enough from one person to the next that it makes any solution non-portable to someone else's instance of the problem. As computer science techniques get better I would wager that this barrier gets thinner. I know that if I spent enough time on it I could solve this problem for myself. But solving it in a way that would help others too? That's a tall order.

There's a lot of problems that right now are near or on the deviation barrier. I like to think that as that barrier hypothetically thins that computers will be able to help us with more unique aspects of our lives and account for individual quirks.

But talking right here right now; I'm not sure that you would be able to find effective productivity coaches. Feel free to prove me wrong on this.

Re: HN: Name a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve

#66

Post by terra3110 » Tue, Mar 27, 2012, 5:35 AM UTC

The major challenge for any photobook creation is the following:

An user has for example 100 images from vacation. Some choose nearly the same object, if this is he case some will be better than others (sharpness, contrast, and so on).

For an automatic creation process of a photobook without the need for the user to "choose" images it is necessary, to identify images with similar objects. Some attributes can be Location (if GPS Data available in the EXIF data) or Time (if multiple images was taken within less than a minute), but this kind of information are not very offen available or accurate. To analyse images to identify similar images and find the "best of the image" with less risk of false positive is a challenge.

Re: HN: Name a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve

#67

Post by dshanahan » Tue, Mar 27, 2012, 5:42 AM UTC

unimpressive wrote: post #65

dshanahan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really like this post; articulating something I experience and something I see a TON of entrepreneurs quietly struggle with. I share your intuition that it's not entirely a machine-ready problem; productivity tools (using that term WIDELY) have certainly improved, corrected in innovative ways for all of our typical human tendencies, and in some cases work really well for "some" people. I've been consulting lately on…

I'm far too young to be of any help demoing products for entrepreneurs. However, I think that this and other problems are near or on what I like to call the "Deviation barrier.". Basically it goes like this: Theres certain problems that seem solvable from your perspective, but the real problem is that the way in which the problem manifests itself deviates largely enough from one person to the next that it makes any s…

I agree this is a problem that's near the "Deviation barrier". I also agree it's narrowing, and admit that what I was suggesting is a 'low-tech' solution. I suppose I was simply offering that I'm seeing empirical evidence that this is a pain point in a particular market that's large enough that people look willing to pay to try and fix it.

Re: HN: Name a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve

#68

Post by true_religion » Tue, Mar 27, 2012, 5:57 AM UTC

terra3110 wrote: post #66

The major challenge for any photobook creation is the following: An user has for example 100 images from vacation. Some choose nearly the same object, if this is he case some will be better than others (sharpness, contrast, and so on). For an automatic creation process of a photobook without the need for the user to "choose" images it is necessary, to identify images with similar objects. Some attributes can be Locat…

There's a guy who's working in this area on HN.

I believe his web app is called Inapic.com

Re: HN: Name a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve

#69

Post by unimpressive » Tue, Mar 27, 2012, 6:21 AM UTC

dshanahan wrote: post #67

unimpressive wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm far too young to be of any help demoing products for entrepreneurs. However, I think that this and other problems are near or on what I like to call the "Deviation barrier.". Basically it goes like this: Theres certain problems that seem solvable from your perspective, but the real problem is that the way in which the problem manifests itself deviates largely enough from one person to the next that it makes any s…

I agree this is a problem that's near the "Deviation barrier". I also agree it's narrowing, and admit that what I was suggesting is a 'low-tech' solution. I suppose I was simply offering that I'm seeing empirical evidence that this is a pain point in a particular market that's large enough that people look willing to pay to try and fix it.

> I also agree it's narrowing, and admit that what I was suggesting is a 'low-tech' solution.

That's not in itself a reason to reject an idea. A lot of the time the best solution is decidedly "Low Tech". Thinking that added complexity has any correlation with the usefulness of a system is a fallacy.

(Example: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Classic-WTF-Lock-and-Key.asp...)

It's not even that your idea is bad. It's not. I'm just skeptical of the availability of individuals who can make a difference without being out of the price range of just about anything that could be defined as a "startup". In fact, I'm skeptical of the availability of such individuals at any price range.

And I'm afraid that if you're serious about the idea that the onus is on you to figure these things out and prove their worth.

Re: HN: Name a problem, any problem, you'd like to see someone solve

#70

Post by aDemoUzer » Tue, Mar 27, 2012, 6:59 AM UTC

unimpressive wrote: post #46

1.) The average computer users fear of their own computer. It hurts me on a deep level (Deeper than just seeing a business opportunity.) to see the bicycle for the mind being marginalized in it's potential by people trying to sell things. (Microsoft, IBM, and co. Have probably done permanent damage to humanity by spreading the meme that computer knowledge is for 'nerds'. Whatever those are.) As we move further into t…

Time Management: http://xkcd.com/876/

On serious note:

Problem: Help me manage what I need to do and motivate me to do it.

Issue with every possible solution: there can't be 1-shoe-fits-all.

There are various solutions proposed: 1. Have a "done" list - people get motivated by seeing what they get done and feel good about themseleves when they are reocrding what they have done, and feel bad when staring things they need to do .

2. Pair-wise to-do list. Randomly pair a user to a different user and they both use various means to motivate each other and provide means to help each other. This is social interaction and people feel some responsibility to get things done when they have someone to answer to, while others dont want to expose their private life.

3. Bombard the user with notifications on what needs to get done or give user with positive enforcement every hour, in order to motivate the user.

There are 2 issues to be addressed: Motivation and organization. If the data is not easily organizable, user dont feel like vesting. If user does not have anything motivating to do those actions, rather than procrastinating, your system is plain doomed.