Brainstorming Product Ideas
A common brainstorming mistake is thinking you have several ideas when you really just have several features for the same experience. A dashboard, a notification, and a mobile app may look different, but they can still be the same solution.
Candidates can also overcorrect by generating ideas that solve different problems. They start with one problem statement but end up addressing multiple related ones. The result is a set of very different ideas that solve different problem statements, making them impossible to compare against one another.
Good ideation keeps the problem statement fixed and changes how you solve it. Solution lenses (discussed below) give you a simple way to do that.
What’s a problem statement
Before generating ideas, tell the interviewer which problem statement you’re solving.
A pain point describes what someone feels. A problem statement explains why it is happening.
- Pain point: New employees repeatedly get blocked when they need information.
- Problem statement: The answers are scattered across tools and people, so employees cannot find a reliable answer when they need one.
The second version is more useful because it gives you something specific to solve.
Keep this sentence visible while you brainstorm. Every idea should address the same problem statement. If an idea addresses a different problem, revise it to fit the agreed problem statement or leave it out.
Solution lenses
A solution lens is a different mechanism for solving the same problem. Applying several lenses to one problem statement helps you generate genuinely distinct ideas instead of variations of the same solution.
Useful lenses include:
- Software: What could a product detect, automate, organize, or recommend? AI solutions fall under this bucket.
- Physical: Could a device or real-world interaction solve the problem?
- Service: Could a person or operational process deliver the outcome?
- Network: Could other users, experts, or providers create the value?
- Environment: Could you change the surrounding context so the problem happens less often?
You do not need to use every lens. Choose the ones that make sense for the problem and use them to generate three genuinely different directions.
For the onboarding problem above, that might look like:
- Software: An AI assistant that uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to find information across company sources and answer questions with citations.
- Service: Daily office hours with an onboarding specialist.
- Network: A peer network that routes questions to experienced employees.
These are not three features of one product. They rely on different ways of creating value and have different costs, risks, and requirements.
A mobile app, a Slack bot, and a push notification would not pass the same test. Those are different ways to deliver a software solution, not different solutions.
Moonshot ideas
A moonshot is not another solution lens. It is the longer-term version of the product if an important constraint disappears.
Including one in your answer shows the interviewer that you can think beyond the safest first release and see where the product could go over time. It signals ambition and product vision, as long as the idea remains connected to the same problem statement and mission.
To generate a moonshot idea, ask yourself:
- What would solve this problem almost completely?
- What becomes possible if the technology improves dramatically?
- What could we build once we have enough data, trust, or distribution?
For the onboarding example, the moonshot could be a system that understands what an employee is trying to do and surfaces a verified answer before they need to ask.
How to prioritize ideas
Before choosing, state your assumptions. What team do you have? How much time? What technology or distribution can you rely on? Without those assumptions, almost any idea can be made to sound like the best one.
Then compare the ideas using four questions:
- Problem fit: Which idea addresses the problem statement most directly?
- Metric impact: Which idea is most likely to move the north star metric?
- Feasibility: What can this team realistically deliver within the timeline?
- Learning: Which idea helps you test the riskiest assumption or learn what to build next?
Suppose the team has eight weeks and the north star is time to an employee’s first independent task. The software direction may be the best starting point because it can reach every new employee and directly reduce the time spent searching for answers. The service could be tested sooner, but it may not scale. The network may become valuable later, once there are enough active participants.
That is a stronger recommendation than simply calling one idea “the most impactful.” It explains why the idea beats out the rest under the stated conditions.
Treat the other ideas as a conditional roadmap:
- What would need to be true for this idea to come next?
- What evidence would change your priority?
- Which capabilities from the first product make the later ideas possible?