I use to apply that to get ideas: Avoid learning how something works at first. Study outside factors. E.g. look at screenshots of an application. Try to imagine how it works. Only learn how it actually works after that.

I started doing that after realizing that I used to do this with software I saw in magazines as a child, and then get disappointed when I got the actual software: When you just look at the surface, it's easy to infer a lot of qualities that are not there, and be entirely unaware of the shortcomings.