I ask myself the question What should I make next? often. When I don’t have a new idea to work on, I think about what’s next. Figuring out what to build is hard, but I know deep down that ideas always come – whether after a conversation, after reading an article on a topic I find interesting, or after reflecting on something that I have noticed.
Austin Henley wrote a blog post called “The blog posts I haven’t written (yet)” recently, in which he wrote down ideas for blog posts that are not yet published on his website. Inspired by this, I wanted to take some time to document some of the questions on my mind that I may want to explore in the future. From questions come ideas. I may not do anything with the questions on my mind, but I do want to get them on paper.
As I was writing the opening paragraphs, I thought to myself that writing down the ideas on my mind may help me refute the voice in the back of my head that says I don’t have any ideas right now, or that I’m not sure what to do nex. Indeed, “what’s next” is often a continuation of something I have already been thinking about or an idea that comes after hearing something explained in a way that resonated with me.
Next doesn’t have to be a big new thing; many of the greatest things are crafted by continually learning about and improving on a project. Indeed, one of the things I am most proud of is this website and all of the things I have written about. Here, you can find years of thoughts and ideas and explorations and reflections and ambitions and visions. This website is the accumulation of years of me; my learning, growth, (changing) passions and ambitions.
Here are some questions I have been thinking about, in no particular order:
- What do I want to learn next year? (Hint: I want to grow as a designer and developer; I want to challenge myself more as a writer.)
- What would a community for bloggers look like?
- What is a good structure for a writing meetup that encourages people to show up on a bi-weekly/monthly basis?
- Can I offer an option in Artemis for someone to choose a different app icon if they install the software as a PWA?
- How should the PWA onboarding experience differ from the web experience, if at all?
- How can passkeys best be explained to users, given the novelty of the concept?
- How can I offers users of software the ability to set a custom colour scheme and blend colours to create different shades that can be used across the application?
- To what extent does structure help vs. impede a community? What is the ideal amount of structure for a community?
- Why does the amount we have changed and grown feel unnoticed until we sit back for a while and reflect on our growth over the years?
- How can animation be used in a progressive web application?
- How can we build technology that helps us express our humanity?
- What opportunities exist for a product that lets you create a search engine for your personal website?
- Should I start thinking about a list of guiding questions (such as those written by Tracy Durnell) to help me solidify the areas into which I want to put more thought?
- What are my design principles? (Early thought: Build focused tools; solve a real problem; abstract technical details as much as possible; write robust code that accounts for as many edge cases as one can; data ownership is essential; user preferences should be respected; accessibility is essential)
- What would a more formal brainstorming practice look like? Sitting in front of the whiteboard for ten minutes?
- Should events show up in my web reader as reminders?
- What other software could be made with “calm” as a core design philosophy?
- What is the utility of community-focused search? (The utility of Hacker News’ search feature as a way of finding good technical explainers on various topics is on my mind. How can we replicate this for other topics?)
- My creative style is very sporadic – I sometimes have many ideas, and other times have a dearth of inspiration. Is there a way I can be more consistent, or is the way I work conducive to creating things I am proud of without pushing myself too much?
- How can I design an office space that is more conducive to creativity?
- Where can I learn more about indie software and its philosophies, development, marketing?
These are some questions on my mind. Some of them came as I was writing, whereas I have been reflecting on others some time. Maybe some of these questions will turn into essays; maybe my take on some questions will become codified in the software I make and how I design. I’m not sure! But I sure am glad that I took some time to think about them.
