This past weekend, my developer friend and I chatted with a founder friend about the book library project. This founder has a unique perspective because he’s a self-taught developer, a trained designer, and a self-taught user experience (UX) person. He can take a product from idea to launch by himself—and has done so successfully by scaling and selling a software company—so he has credibility.

I wasn’t sure how the user experience should flow, so I wanted his input. The conversation was helpful, and he made a key suggestion: since the solution is being built to solve a problem that I’m experiencing firsthand, I could start with the output I’d be happy to see as a user instead of starting with the user experience. That is, I could create hypothetical examples of what kind of output I’d want this solution to create that would be tremendously valuable to me.

His point was that we could work backward to determine what the UX would need to create the output. But also, looking at this way would inform what would technically need to be built to create that output. My developer friend and I agreed that’d be a great exercise, so I’ve been working on it.

Doing this analysis has been a great exercise. It’s forced me to think about how the tool will improve my current workflow and, hopefully, that of other users. With so much information in so many books, whittling it down to the key pieces of valuable information in response to a specific question was thought-provoking. Thinking about how information and the connections between it (ideas, people, books, etc.) should be presented and how to do this without drowning myself in information was eye-opening.

I’ve completed one of these, and I’ll do a few more. A big takeaway is that the connections between information in various books make the library unique and valuable. Connections can uncover new insights. New insights help entrepreneurs develop unique solutions to problems or identify the unconventional next action to take given their goals. Today, the people who are able to take advantage of this process are mainly those gifted with a photographic memory, which isn’t me (more thoughts on that here). Showing these connections can’t be done using only text. A visual component allowing people to easily see the connections from a high level and decide where to double-click is necessary.

I’m a big proponent of starting with the end in mind and working backward, but I didn’t do a great job of doing that with this project. My friend pointed out that since I’m experiencing the problem myself, I’m too close—it’s hard to see past the details and stay focused on the big picture. He’s right. His suggested exercise is forcing me to articulate what will add value and how it looks. This will help my developer friend and me reprioritize the features and also highlight shortcomings in what we’ve already built and plan to build.

Sometimes, bringing in a fresh pair of eyes to look at things from 50,000 feet can be helpful. I’m glad my friend made the time to chat and share his candid feedback.