The followings are the list of questions I personally use before starting a project. Every idea is nebulous when it comes to a mind. We can materialize it by writing down the ideas. It’s surprisingly hard to write it down first, and you will realize a lot of things. In sum, writing is thinking. It serves as a scaffolding to think through a research project. These list of questions are a living document, and you will constantly update as the project progresses.

Answer each question in 2~3 sentences. I usually set a timer for 15 mins for each. If one of the questions takes more than 15 mins, it’s the weakness of the idea of the current form.

1. What are you doing? Is this building a new framework? Testing hypothesis?
2. Significance: Why is this important?
3. Knowledge gaps, limitations, critical needs: What are missing?
4. Innovation: what’s our approach and why is it innovative?
5. Can we use existing techniques to achieve the aim? If so, why do we need your approach?
6. Expected outcomes: What would the success of the project look like?
7. Evaluation: How do we know if we succeed?
8. What would be impact beyond a single research community and academia?
9. Sketch ~3 tasks for each aim.