Product Idea Generator

How to use it

1. Roll. You get an object, a verb and a user. Together they make a prompt such as “Combine an umbrella with something else, for cyclists.”
2. Lock what you like. If the object is interesting, lock it and roll the verb and the user until something clicks.
3. Answer the question under the prompt. What would it do? Who would use it first? Draw it on the back of an envelope if that helps.

Do not wait for a good idea. Make a bad one on purpose, then make it less bad.

Why an object, a verb and a user

The Scavengers chapter describes breaking a product into its parts and rebuilding it. A pen has a look, a feel, a material and a way of releasing ink, and each can change. This tool picks one familiar object and gives you one small thing to do to it, such as combine it, shrink it, stretch it or hide it. The third part is a person. An invention with no user is just a curiosity, so the tool makes you picture someone using it.

The verbs work like the prompts in other idea-generation methods that ask you to substitute, combine or adapt. The verbs in this generator come from the book’s own text, so they are not a copy of any other list.

An inventor in the book

The book tells of one author’s stepfather, Julien, early on as an example of everyday creativity. The book says:

Julien would only eat, read or play with what he found each day and he was a recycling genius.

That is the spirit of this tool. You do not need a lab or a budget to invent. You need an ordinary thing and a different way of looking at it.

From the How to Play chapter of the book.

Where the words come from

Every word in the generator comes from the text of the book. The objects are everyday things the book mentions, the verbs are its verbs and the users are the people it talks about. The lists are short, so you will see repeats sooner than you would with a giant word bank.

Questions

Is this for real inventions? It is for starting them. A prompt gives you a direction. Checking whether something already exists, whether it is safe and whether anyone would buy it is separate work.

Is the idea mine? Yes. The tool picks words with a seeded random number generator, and nothing you do here is sent to us.

How do I share a prompt? Press Share link. The address holds the seeds and any locks, so whoever opens it sees the same prompt.

Does it keep my ideas? Only if you press Save, and then only on this device. You can clear them at any time.