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ProblemOfTheDay
p/problemofthedayPosting a real problem, every single day.
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Colin Winhall

Problem of the day - A real problem, posted every single day 😤📆

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Are you a maker 🙌? Are you struggling for ideas on problems to solve 💡🤔? Follow Problem of the day to get your daily dose of real problems from real users.

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Angie
Hi @colinwinhall, I think Problem of the day can challenge people who like to build new products who often don't know here to start. I'm curious how you select the problems on Twitter. Do you mostly filter the word "invent"? I'll keep an eye on the website in case I need some new ideas while I'm still new to developing apps.
Colin Winhall
Maker
@angeliquesocial Hi Angie, thanks for you comment and I hope that it can serve that purpose to anyone looking where to start. I am lucky to have found something that I enjoy doing and in the field that inspires me most (startups and entrepreneurship). People tend to use specific sentence structure and wording when conveying a problem they are facing. I call these “trigger sentences”. An example of a trigger sentence is one that you already mentioned, "I wish someone would invent". I hope that you continue to visit and find inspiration from the problems 🙂
Colin Winhall
Maker
Hi Product Hunters! As someone who is obsessed with ideas 💡 and inventions you realise quickly that the best ideas nearly always stem from a real problem 😥. Especially ideas that are turned in to successful businesses 💰💰💰. Looking at a single problem can help generate dozens of ideas or solutions to that problem. Therefore, I believe that in order to ideate successfully you should start by looking at problems. The point of this project is to list one problem a day, sourced directly from a user on Twitter. No matter how big or small these problems may seem, they can inevitably lead to larger ideas in their respective solutions. I hope you like it!
Dan Parsons
@colinwinhall How do you source the problems from Twitter?... you should encourage people to use #POTD on Twitter if that's not the plan already. Lots of complainers on Twitter so I could see #POTD catching on... once aggregated the data may reveal some interesting trends.
Colin Winhall
Maker
@danbyday Hi Dan. I source the problems on Twitter manually using some "trigger words" such as "someone invent". I initially planned to try to ride the hashtag wave with #POTD only to realise I would be competing against "photo of the day". Something which is used far more than mine would.
Dave Poly
I like the idea. Crowdsourcing problems and allowing the makers to get inspired from there. Maybe future features are categorization. Upvoting problems you agree with (identify which problems seem to be had by the most amount of people).
Colin Winhall
Maker
@dave_poly Hi Dave, thanks for the feedback. I completely agree on the up voting, it would be a great addition and categorization is something I will try to implement soon!
Xavier Boyd
Hey Colin, I like your idea and wanted to see if you would consider adding a resolved state to the problem once there was a suitable solution. Let me know your thoughts...
Colin Winhall
Maker
@xmanalive great idea! I will see how I can do that!
Marc Syp
This is cool. This is actually very similar to my first startup idea, and we fleshed it out at a hackathon a did a little dev on it about 6-7 years ago. I was really green so I never got it off the ground, and have since moved on, but happy to see someone working on a similar idea, and making it happen! If you're curious on how I approached it -- I called it Inqlist, and the wireframes for it can be seen on my website: http://www.marcsyp.com/#/inqlist/ Cheers and good luck!
Colin Winhall
Maker
@mpsyp Thanks for sharing that Marc, it looks great! It is a pitty you did not continue the project! How were you sourcing your problems?
Marc Syp
@colinwinhall The idea was that they were seeded by a crew of early adopters/friends/worker bees, and then the rest were crowdsourced. :) The real challenge was getting people actually no NOT contribute ideas or solutions, but instead focus on the problem to be solved. The question mark was banned in our form field. :)
Amazeowl
Looks like the problem of the day is that the http://problemoftheday.co/ site has a "509 Bandwidth Limit Exceeded". Good problem to have!
Colin Winhall
Maker
@amazeowl I was quite surprised myself! Haha. I fixed it within 5 minutes luckily!
sitebuilderstudio
Absolutely Genius!
Balachandar M
Nice. I love the UI. Few problems are worth solving...
Crypto
This is great! Entrepreneurship is mostly about solving problems, and heres where you go to find them. Well done!
Colin Winhall
Maker
@mattvlopez Thanks Matt! Glad you like it!
Marc Syp
p.s. you could just harvest the @BoredElonMusk twitter stream for all your content. :)
LaNiña Wiegers
I love the format. I think nowadays news come and go so quickly but one thing a day is really best to digest. Maybe allow up to 5 ocmments?
Colin Winhall
Maker
@lanina_wiegers Thanks LaNiña! What do you mean by up to 5 comments? Unlimited comments are currently in place, but first-time commenters have to be approved first to avoid spam.
Adam Millen
I now follow the RSS for this on feedly, but all I see is the "description", not the problem itself...
Colin Winhall
Maker
@crazyideasnz Hi Adam, might be becuase the ideas are taken directly from Twitter? I have a plugin in wordpress that handles that connection and displays it on the site. Not sure how I could help you there...