Brainstorm Ideas New

Brainstorm Ideas New

Brainstorm feature ideas for a new product in initial discovery from PM, Designer, and Engineer perspectives. Use when starting product discovery

Category: design Source: phuryn/pm-skills

What Is This?

Overview

Brainstorm Ideas New is a structured ideation skill designed for product teams entering the initial discovery phase of a new product. It generates feature ideas simultaneously from three distinct professional perspectives: Product Manager (PM), Designer, and Engineer. Rather than relying on a single viewpoint or unstructured group brainstorming, this skill applies a multi-lens framework to surface a broader, more balanced set of ideas early in the product lifecycle.

The skill is particularly valuable during the ambiguous early stages when a product concept exists but its feature set has not yet been defined. By prompting ideation from PM, Designer, and Engineer angles in a single session, teams can identify opportunities, constraints, and user needs that might otherwise be missed when only one discipline leads the discovery conversation.

This approach reduces the risk of building features that are technically sound but poorly designed, or well-designed but misaligned with business goals. It creates a foundation for cross-functional alignment before any significant investment in research, design, or development begins.

Who Should Use This

  • Product managers beginning discovery on a new product or startup idea who need a structured starting point for feature exploration
  • UX and product designers who want to ensure their early concepts account for technical feasibility and business viability
  • Engineers joining a new product initiative who want to contribute feature ideas beyond implementation concerns
  • Startup founders who need to rapidly generate and evaluate feature concepts across multiple disciplines
  • Product teams running discovery workshops who want a consistent ideation framework
  • Innovation leads or consultants facilitating initial product strategy sessions for clients

Why Use It?

Problems It Solves

  • Single-perspective ideation produces blind spots, where a PM-only session may ignore technical debt risks, and an engineering-only session may miss user experience priorities
  • Unstructured brainstorming sessions often generate redundant ideas or fail to cover critical product dimensions
  • Early-stage teams frequently skip cross-functional input during discovery, leading to costly misalignments later in the development cycle
  • New product discovery lacks a repeatable process, making it difficult to compare ideation quality across different projects or teams
  • Startup teams with limited resources need to maximize the output of each discovery session without scheduling multiple separate workshops

Core Highlights

  • Generates feature ideas from PM, Designer, and Engineer perspectives in a single structured output
  • Designed specifically for new product discovery, not iteration on existing products
  • Provides a repeatable ideation framework that can be applied consistently across projects
  • Surfaces technical, experiential, and business considerations simultaneously
  • Reduces time spent coordinating separate discipline-specific brainstorming sessions
  • Supports early cross-functional alignment before design or development investment begins
  • Applicable to startup ideas, internal tools, and enterprise product initiatives

How to Use It?

Basic Usage

To invoke this skill using a compatible AI assistant or the Happycapy platform, provide a product concept as input. The skill will return structured feature ideas organized by perspective.

Skill: brainstorm-ideas-new
Input: "A mobile app that helps remote teams track shared project milestones"

Expected output structure:

PM Perspective:
- Feature: Milestone dependency mapping
- Feature: Progress notification system

Designer Perspective:
- Feature: Visual timeline with drag-and-drop reordering
- Feature: Color-coded status indicators per team member

Engineer Perspective:
- Feature: Webhook integrations with existing project tools
- Feature: Offline sync capability for low-connectivity environments

Specific Scenarios

Scenario one involves a startup founder with a rough product concept who needs to prepare for an investor conversation. Running this skill against the core idea produces a structured feature list that demonstrates cross-functional thinking without requiring a full team.

Scenario two involves a product team kicking off a discovery sprint. The skill output serves as a pre-populated idea backlog that the team can then prioritize, challenge, or expand during their first workshop session.

Real-World Examples

A fintech startup exploring a personal budgeting tool uses this skill to generate PM-focused monetization features, designer-focused onboarding flows, and engineer-focused data aggregation approaches in one pass.

A SaaS company building an internal HR tool runs the skill to ensure their initial feature list addresses both employee experience and system integration requirements before committing to a roadmap.

Important Notes

Requirements

  • A defined product concept or problem statement is required as input
  • The skill is intended for new products only, not for iterating on existing feature sets
  • Users should have basic familiarity with PM, Designer, and Engineer role distinctions to interpret the output effectively