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axiom: When brainstorming - Engineers should be given the "problem use case" first, then brainstorm solutions

Engineers often come up with an idea - then find a problem and apply the idea - the risk is that what they thought was a problem isn't really a serious one.

It may be better to split brain storming into three steps:

  1. "problem use case" extraction from problem space
  2. "problem use case" prioritisation
  3. brainstorm possible solutions for a chosen use case

For example:

I could think of 100 ideas on how to improve the search quality in answers.yahoo.com - but when real life tests are run I could easily find that the feature I have defined only applies to 0.001% of situations in reality.

Step1: "problem use case" extraction

It is better to start with looking at what the user was trying to do eg: Gemma was trying to find an idea for a good date but when using answers.yahoo.com and got the following answers

Problem: user is looking for advice that is local. User is subjected to some random unhelpful comments.

Percentage occurrence of this use case: 65%

Step 2: "problem use case" prioritisation

Sort list of problem use cases and pick high priority cases

Step 3: Brainstorm possible solutions for important use cases