I've worked for about ten years as a civil engineer in the water industry; I create computer models of water networks for utilities. The software is expensive, and the UI/UX is terrible, typically of software for large corporations.
Part of building a model is calibrating it against real-life data, to do this you restricting valves or roughen pipes in the model. While a model simulation only takes a fraction of a second, validating results can take a minute or two because of the bad UI/UX.
I create a web app to simulate the water model in your browser and for it to run as you make changes with all the relevant data upfront.
https://calibrate.modelcreate.com/
I had a project with 80 hours set aside for calibration; I completed it all in 8 hours with my app.
I'm testing the market now to see if others would want to use it. If so, then I will look at commercialisation options and see if it's worth developing further. (Sorry for a LinkedIn post below, this is where all the civil engineers hang out, and I've already got some validation on it)
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lukepbutler_water-infoworks-e...
Work long enough in an industry, and you will find endless ideas to work on, the only question is will people use them and also pay for it.
You can read about how I came up with the idea here: https://www.iprompted.com/blog/scratching-my-own-itch
I looked for an alternative to these social login buttons but haven't found any. I decided to quit my job as lead software engineer and created my own company that offers a social login solution that protects user identity [1].
The previous startup came also from another frustration (maybe because we are frustrated in France all the time ...) so my pattern would be to find something that bothers you (and hopefully others) and solves it.
But I've recently learned (the hard way after multiple startups) that the key is to validate your idea first before investing too much time in it.
That and I've also found that the best ideas are the easiest. Everything slots into place, makes sense and you get an overwhelming feeling of "why had I not thought of it before". I always start with writing notes and if the ideas are flowing faster than I can write them down, I usually know that it's a good concept.
I hope that helps!
over at