When you sit down in a brainstorming meeting it can be quite hard to distinguish between facts, opinions and guesses, and it can be hard to track them even if you are using a visual aid like Post-it Notes.
I like to use different colours or use the first letters for Facts, Opinions, and Guesses.
Facts is what we can easily measure or prove, like how many users we have on our site or how long the response time is, and so on.
Opinions are things that people think is a fact, it can be true or be false, it can also be facts that cant be proven. Opinions can easily translate as facts if it comes from someone respectable, so opinions should be treated with caution. It is important to identify opinions and explore them.
Guesses are uncertain ideas, we do not know much about them, but could be valuable to explore. Many guesses are often proven to be wrong, and you may wonder why you should even bother if guesses are wrong, but those few that turns out to be right is often groundbreaking.
Opinion and guesses are often the reason for lengthy meetings and frustration, because we cant distinguish them from facts, but now when we have the FOG factor you can easily identify them and move forward. You could then try to make opinions and guesses into facts in-between meetings by researching them using surveys, fact search and market tests.
