Sometimes all you need is just the right question to kick your idea back on track. This is less a guide and more just a litany of questions if you get stuck. I recommend going through each of them and letting your mind wander on the answer.
If you to go hardcore, come up with five answers to each one. Just a few lines might do. It might take you a few sessions, but at the end you’ll have over 250 ideas. Whenever that seems daunting, I always think of how nice that would be to start with in the morning.
Experience
- What is it like to use the product?
- How can you convey the experience without using it?
- How can you share someone's experience using it?
- Do you need to challenge people to use it?
- What happens if you challenge people to not use it?
- What is a shocking demonstration of its benefit?
Value
- Does the product give a lot of something good?
- Does the product take away a lot of something bad?
- How is the product the unique in what it does?
- In what situation is your product the hero?
- Why is it okay to not be better than competitors?
- What is the unexpected alternative of your product?
Feeling
- What is the emotional benefit of the main feature?
- What is the emotional state before using the product?
- What is the emotional state after using the product?
- What emotional weight remains from not using it?
- What is the emotional weight that's lifted from using it?
Spokespeople
- What character could embody your core message?
- How can you share an influential person's experience?
- Who is the most interesting person to support it?
- Who is the most unexpected person to support it?
- What is interesting about a normal person using it?
- What's uninteresting about someone special using it?
Customers
- Who are the most diehard users of your product?
- Who should be the most diehard users of your product?
- Who needs your product that doesn't care about it?
- Who inspires you to make your product better?
- Who inspires your customers to make themselves better?
Mission
- How does this product embody the brand's mission?
- How does this represent the core values of the brand?
- What did it take to arrive at this product?
Entertainment
- How can you adopt another category's look and feel?
- How can you turn it into a parody?
- How can you make it the hero of a short film?
- How can it be in the background of a short film?
- Can you make your audience part of the story?
Humor
- What's funny about your serious product?
- What's serious about your funny product?’
- What is the most ridiculous way to convey the benefit?
- What ludicrous scene makes your benefit memorable?
Appearance
- Why is the product unexpectedly beautiful?
- What happens if you make the product ugly?
- How would your product be presented in a museum?
- What would we learn if we looked really close?
- What is something obvious we're missing?
Society
- What would a world look like based on your product?
- How would our world change if everyone used it?
- How would our world change if nobody used it?
- What needs to change for your product to be ubiquitous?
- What would happen if this product existed 500 years ago?
Support
- Whose achievements can you authentically praise?
- Who can you authentically support to improve the world?
- What cause does your brand have a right to stand for?
- What can your brand no longer stand for?
Honesty
- What does your product not apologize for?
- What is the unfiltered truth of your product?
- What did your haters get right about the product?
- What do your fans love that nobody else understand?
If all else fails
- What is the clearest description of what your product does?