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Click for larger version of Idea Machine notes
The process of coming up with hundred dollar ideas is often not as difficult as writing about them. Lately, I’ve been so busy developing ideas and being an overall creative dynamo that I have had very little time to actually post these wonderful ideas on this site. Also my computer was down for about a week too. In my posting doldrum I was able to develop many ideas in my sketchbook and on various pieces of paper.
Knowing that the following months are going to be very busy for me, I decided to invent a machine that could potentially make MoHDI.com and many other sites on the internet obsolete. The Idea Machine, is going to be a machine that comes up with ideas. If science fiction has taught us anything it’s that creating a powerful machine like this might cause more damage than good. I’m prepared to take that risk.
Creating something as powerful as the idea machine is going to take some time, so I decided that it might be interesting to document the development process. As you can see, I have a page of notes (much like this product that I offer in my shop). This is a good start for the project. I also took a look at Mary’s Idea Generator. This gave me some wonderful ideas. I also checked out the internet for helpful inspiration. The internet is full of wonder. A lot of my notes focus on the interface. I decided to do a face interface, not just any face, my face. Babies and toddlers always grab at peoples faces, since we all aspire to think more like babies and toddlers, I decided that the face is the perfect interface. I’m surprised that we don’t see more face interfaces out there ( if anyone finds good examples of this, please send them to me).
The interface and some basic concepts are covered in the notes.
The next step that I didn’t write about much is my budget. I need to figure out the budget for this project. My time is valuable but this Idea Machine could really benefit mankind ( or destroy it). So since my time is limited I’m going to try to give myself a budget of 31 hours for this project. I figure that should be enough time to create something like this. Since my budget is sort of tight, I might have to cut out some features that I had in mind, I don’t think I need the idea machine to walk, at least for the first version.
Here is a short breakdown of the budget.
- 10 hours: Thinking, doodling, making notes, research
- 5 hours: Graphical interface, designing the machine
- 10 hours: Programming, cleaning up interface, dinking around
- 5 hours:Feedback, fixing, testing
- 1 hour: Just a little cushion in case my estimates are off
I’ve already spent about 3 hours on this project so far, yikes, I’ve got a long way to go.
Next documentation of development I will share some of my design and interface experiments as well more details on how this machine will work.
The Matrix, Battlestar Galactica, Terminator and Small Wonder are just a few example of science fiction warning us of the potential disastrous results of technology.
Let’s hope this project does not get too far out of hand.