I think what would work best with me are the following:
If you’re in the very early stages, “Oh, I’ve been thinking about building a 3d printer.” Basically this is a conversational gambit, not a request for a favor at all, and if I accept that gambit we can have a conversation about 3d printers in which I might tell you things that are useful to you.
If you have most of a requirements specification, “Hey, I’m planning on building a 3d printer. I know you know a lot about this stuff, would you mind looking over my overview? I have a printout here, or I can email it to you. Maybe we can get together for lunch on Saturday and you can tell me what you think?” I’d expect specific requests to work better than general ones if you’re genuinely at a place where that’s the specific concern you have; an arbitrarily chosen specific request in a field of equally significant problems will probably annoy me. That is, if you say “Yadda yadda, and I’m not sure how I want to think about scaling factors, what do you think?” and I look at your spec and my reaction is that scaling factors are the least of your worries, my instinct is to throw the spec against a wall.
If you have most of a design, the same strategy as above, though acknowledging that a design review is much more of an investment in time and attention. I would probably respond best to a design document that had both a high-level design and a detailed design, with the explicit understanding that if I don’t choose to invest the time in a detailed design review I can just review the high-level design. Often, if the high-level design isn’t crap, it will draw me into the details anyway.
In fact, the same pattern as above applies all the way through. The general principle here seems to be that I want evidence that you are actually putting effort into this, and are genuinely looking to me for assistance, rather than trying to manipulate me into doing the work for you.
I think what would work best with me are the following:
If you’re in the very early stages, “Oh, I’ve been thinking about building a 3d printer.” Basically this is a conversational gambit, not a request for a favor at all, and if I accept that gambit we can have a conversation about 3d printers in which I might tell you things that are useful to you.
If you have most of a requirements specification, “Hey, I’m planning on building a 3d printer. I know you know a lot about this stuff, would you mind looking over my overview? I have a printout here, or I can email it to you. Maybe we can get together for lunch on Saturday and you can tell me what you think?” I’d expect specific requests to work better than general ones if you’re genuinely at a place where that’s the specific concern you have; an arbitrarily chosen specific request in a field of equally significant problems will probably annoy me. That is, if you say “Yadda yadda, and I’m not sure how I want to think about scaling factors, what do you think?” and I look at your spec and my reaction is that scaling factors are the least of your worries, my instinct is to throw the spec against a wall.
If you have most of a design, the same strategy as above, though acknowledging that a design review is much more of an investment in time and attention. I would probably respond best to a design document that had both a high-level design and a detailed design, with the explicit understanding that if I don’t choose to invest the time in a detailed design review I can just review the high-level design. Often, if the high-level design isn’t crap, it will draw me into the details anyway.
In fact, the same pattern as above applies all the way through. The general principle here seems to be that I want evidence that you are actually putting effort into this, and are genuinely looking to me for assistance, rather than trying to manipulate me into doing the work for you.