Abstract: Help With Project Idea (AI+Psychology+...)

ayakuro

ayakuro

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Greetings everyone,

this is my first time posting here. I hope I didn't misplace the thread, but if I did, I'm sure some moderator will give me a heads up soon enough.

First off, something has been wandering in the back of my mind for quite some time now. Ever since I've heard about artificial intelligence, I've had many ideas on how it can be applied to help humanity. But those ideas are kind of far-fetched and require far more than just raw computing power. Many technologies, yet to be developed, are needed. But after maturing a bit, I've figured I should somehow connect my areas of interest and make something. For instance, I really love reading about psychology, AI, philosophy and self-help stuff. My intuition is telling me that I can somehow connect all of that into something beautiful, simple yet very useful. I've had difficulties pinpointing what that could be, it might take me years to figure it out. One idea I had is a more thought-out version of the Khan Academy website and alike. A website (necessarily, since I want it to be global, on the Internet) that would be educational in nature, but that incorporates AI in modifying itself depending on your own learning curve. It would also require knowledge about human nature, since it has to be encouraging and open to all people. I do have a "big-picture" overview of it all, but I won't go into detail. The idea is it would take some key aspects of other sites like Khan Academy, Duolingo and so on.

After telling you all of this (and I'm sorry if I was vague), I was wondering if anyone could use their imagination a bit and see if they come up with anything. Literally, anything that would connect all those areas (psychology, AI, education, ...), is something I could develop for the Internet and is something that would be helpful to people.

P.S. If you want, we can discuss it in PM. If you, perhaps, want to cooperate with me on this, we could talk about it. I'm interested to hear about any proposals. Do have in mind that I'm a student and I don't have as much time on my hand over the year (college doesn't start for another 2 months for me though), but this is supposed to be a big thing, so it's not short-term anyway.
 
I've worked on projects that are designed to be consumer based.
  • First thing I would do is find out who your market is.
    • How much money and time will they be willing to sacrifice for it?
    • What is your demographic?
  • Next I would put a lot of thought into how you think that people will use it.
    • This is more important than most people think. People are far more likely to use something if they find it intuitive and simple.
    • Simplicity is one of the hardest things to achieve in a design. Anyone can create something with an infinite amount of money and time.
  • Next I would figure out the philosophy of the design. This is key to actually getting you idea from paper to execution
    • Make sure that you understand what your project is going to do. If it's a hammer, make sure that you are building a hammer, and make sure that its main function of punching nails into a piece of wood, is at the top of its functionality. Everything else that it does is just a (wank feature), industry term.
    • It's all too easy to overcomplicate the intentions of the project. Stay focused.
    • You also need to be flexible in your design philosophy. Your original ideas will organically drive the design into new areas of thought, as the nature of your endeavor will become more evident as you get deeper into it.
    • You may find that your solutions may have nothing to do with technology at all. So don't go all Captain Ahab at the beginning with your approach.
I could probably mention more and maybe will if you find this helpful. And if you answer these questions with due diligence, the project will start to create itself.
 
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Here is part of a script from the show Leverage that when I first saw this scene was so profound for design philosophy. You cannot get this kind of wisdom from a textbook. I know it;s a tv show, but the wisdom is timeless. It takes the weight of the "blank sheet of paper" off of your shoulders. This episode is called The Gold Job; season 4 ep 16. This scene is after Hardison's first attempt at creating his own conn for the team, which is overly complicated but nevertheless brilliant in design. His version of the conn fails, but is saved by the wisdom of the team leader Nate, who had mailed Hardison his prediction for how his plan would actually succeed in the end.


Eliot (tosses an envelope down): You got mail. (to Nate) I’m out, man.

(Hardison opens the envelope to find written on hotel stationary “A) Choke off the distribution. B) Buy a drill. C) Break into vault.”)

Hardison: How? How could you have possibly known this?

Nate: I knew enough. I knew you had a complicated con in the works. And I knew, as long as we had those three things on the list and that Barbara Madsen was distracted from all that gold piling up in that useless vault, that we had a shot at taking over the family business. You never count on the perfect plan. You know, the perfect plan, it has too many moving parts, and it’s... you got to expect the perfect plan to fail. I mean, that’s what I do.

Hardison: Then what do you count on?

Nate: I count on the simplest and ugliest plan, not plan “A,” no, but, like, plan “G,” for example. I start with plan “G.” Now, the quick, simple, ugly plan that I know is gonna work if everything goes bad. I just pretty it up a little bit, add this and that. I gave you a backup plan. That’s all. You know, Hardison, you should be proud.
 
You need to reverse your thinking a bit, as a general way of beginning this endeavor.
It's not what you want or think people need or want. It's doing your research to discover where a gap is hiding.
Lots of people are doing lots of things. Most of the stuff you think is an original idea is already in development.
 
wiredandwound said:
  • Your original ideas will organically drive the design into new areas of thought, as the nature of your endeavor will become more evident as you get deeper into it.
  • You may find that your solutions may have nothing to do with technology at all. So don't go all Captain Ahab at the beginning with your approach.
Click to expand...

These are also excellent points.
Just because everything is already out there, doesn't mean you should never start in the first place.
You just have to remain open to change during your iteration process.
 
wiredandwound said:
I've worked on projects that are designed to be consumer based.
  • First thing I would do is find out who your market is.
    • How much money and time will they be willing to sacrifice for it?
    • What is your demographic?
  • Next I would put a lot of thought into how you think that people will use it.
    • This is more important than most people think. People are far more likely to use something if they find it intuitive and simple.
    • Simplicity is one of the hardest things to achieve in a design. Anyone can create something with an infinite amount of money and time.
  • Next I would figure out the philosophy of the design. This is key to actually getting you idea from paper to execution
    • Make sure that you understand what your project is going to do. If it's a hammer, make sure that you are building a hammer, and make sure that its main function of punching nails into a piece of wood, is at the top of its functionality. Everything else that it does is just a (wank feature), industry term.
    • It's all too easy to overcomplicate the intentions of the project. Stay focused.
    • You also need to be flexible in your design philosophy. Your original ideas will organically drive the design into new areas of thought, as the nature of your endeavor will become more evident as you get deeper into it.
    • You may find that your solutions may have nothing to do with technology at all. So don't go all Captain Ahab at the beginning with your approach.
I could probably mention more and maybe will if you find this helpful. And if you answer these questions with due diligence, the project will start to create itself.
Click to expand...

Hello and thank you very much for responding with such great advice! I am aware that I should make it as simple as possible (I always remember the quote "Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler." by A. Einstein, I think), but I tend to overthink and sometimes complicate stuff. My goal is to change that. The philosophy of the design is getting more clear to me as I think more about it, however still a ways to go. My market should be anyone, really. Also, I thought it could run for free at the beginning and add advertisements as things got going. All in all, I very much appreciate your input. I'll think about it more clearly now.

Wyote said:
You need to reverse your thinking a bit, as a general way of beginning this endeavor.
It's not what you want or think people need or want. It's doing your research to discover where a gap is hiding.
Lots of people are doing lots of things. Most of the stuff you think is an original idea is already in development.
Click to expand...

Yes, I agree with your point completely. I must mention that this is hardly my first time in doing such stuff. I am a student and have done a number of projects up until now. I've also been programming for about 10 years now, first only competitively concerning algorithms&data structures, later on moved to other stuff. Having said that, I do have a long way to go regarding actually starting and committing to the project. Always do I get thoughts such as "Yeah, but you still don't know this and this. Once you learn that, you can start your project." It's what stopped me from doing many projects in my "career". Now, returning to your point, I know I must find the "gap", that's what I am trying to figure out currently. And yes, especially in the field of software, it is highly likely you will have "the same idea" that someone developed already and charges less than you would. Thank you for pointing that out, I'll do more research until I figure it out.


Thank you both again, if you have any more useful pointers, I'm all ears.
 
ayakuro said:
The philosophy of the design is getting more clear to me as I think more about it, however still a ways to go.
Click to expand...
What do you want this project to do? It seems that you want a learning platform, maybe? Or are you thinking of something else?
Or
What is your intentions for this project? You say that you want to use (psychology, AI, and education) to help people, so what is it about the combination of these things that you think will help people?

Why I'm asking this is because a project must be important to you first before you can convince that it should be important to others. If this part is not clear to you, I would recommend free-writing. Just write anything about why you think it is important. This is often helpful to organize my own thoughts.
 
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@ayakuro Have you figured out what the ai would change to adjust for learning curve? Would it be something like adding more of X type of problem to the coursework?

Also I'm fairly certain there's research out there about what types of educational approaches work best, so maybe look into that and whether it's used in things like Khan Academy.
 
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