I started this post writing about some of the ideas I’ve had that I wish would get built, and then I realized I was violating one of my own cardinal rules. Focus on the problem that needs solving, don’t jump to the solution.

It’s hard to maintain that rigorous focus on problems in internal product management meetings, but when talking with customers or consumers, you’ll need to actively walk them backwards from solution to problem. You can do this by simply asking them “Why?” until you get to a problem. (This is one of the ideas from IDEO’s Method Cards.)

So I’ll start with one of my product ideas:

Consumer: I want a “snooze” feature for individual incoming emails so I can choose when I want to read them.

You: Why?

Consumer: Because I can’t respond to emails as they come in, and then later they get lost in my inbox.

You: Why?

Consumer: Because I get too many emails! I’d never get anything done if I did. Also, some of them are not relevant YET.

You: Why are they not relevant yet?

Consumer: Because people send me emails about things that will happen in a few weeks, or background information that I might need to consult later but I’m not sure.

You: Why do people send emails before they’re relevant?

Consumer: Probably to make sure they don’t forget to send them later!

I recommend that you tell people in advance that you’re going to keep asking them “why”. Otherwise, unless you are an adorable four-year-old, they may be tempted to punch you in the face. (Actually, the temptation may be there even if you are four. Watch out, kiddies.) But this dialogue has opened up a few more definite concepts to explore:

• Email recipient wants to defer time-sensitive emails that are relevant later (if there is a date in the body of the email, this can be automated or the interface can be very streamlined?)
• Email recipient wants to defer maybe-relevant-later emails (does auto-review in X months make sense or would that be annoying? Treat relevant-later and maybe-relevant-later emails differently?)
• Email sender wants to send email so they don’t forget to do so / to CYA (what if they could schedule their email to be sent at a later date?)
• Since inbox scanning is impractical, could emails be displayed on a calendar or timeline?

Ideas like this can be fodder for much richer prototypes that get at the heart of what consumers want. As I’ve written before, customer-suggested features have a lot of risk. But in digging deeper into customer-suggested problems, there is the opportunity for tremendous innovation.

In writing this, I realize that the “email snooze” concept is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a whole concept around time-shifted internetting that cries out for exploration…

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