Caffeinated Advice | The Benefits of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Welcome to Caffeinated Advice. My name is Jay Johns, founder, and CEO of 3r Interactive, LLC. Hopefully, like me, you have your coffee ready, because as we have our caffeinated conversation, I want to talk about the importance of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

I believe MVP’s are critical, primarily because you don’t know yet what your customers want. As you build prototypes, you may fall into the trap of creating what you or your team wants to see. The downside is that you are not your customer, so you don’t know what they’re willing to pay for your product. If you’re trying to make money and not just doing an art project, the biggest thing to keep in mind is there’s a big difference between people liking something and being willing to pay money for it. As the project gets underway, you can quickly start making decisions based on what you or your immediate team wants to see. However, that is rarely a reflection of what your customer base would want.

The benefit of an MVP (particularly one where you’re not coding and are instead making prototypes using software like Adobe XD or Framer or Sketch), is that you can get a feel for its functionality and look-and-feel. You can also start getting feedback from customers and stakeholders on a tight budget.

Once you start getting code and involving programmers, it will cost tens of thousands of dollars. The spending train does not stop at that station; you will almost always have to make changes once you get feedback. If you did not get feedback before launch, you would get it after you go live. Then you will have more cost to sink into the changes customers want to see.

Prototypes Without Code

Instead of spending tens (or hundreds) of thousands of dollars on a coded prototype that will need to be changed anyway, go through the process of building a nonprogrammatic prototype. We use Adobe XD, but there are quite a few other tools that bridge the coded and non-coded parts so you can still provide the flexibility code offers. For example, Adobe XD takes the Wizard of Oz approach to specific features like logging in to a user profile, which is effectively text boxes, smoke, and mirrors. Some prototyping tools like Framer go beyond this, to allow you to program more specific interactions. More importantly, you’re then able to hand over not only the art assets for the prototype but the small pieces of code as well. You are placing the programmer light-years ahead in knowing how to move forward.

Building A Blueprint

That being said, yes, user testing is super important, and a major reason for having a Minimum Viable Product. The second reason to have a prototype is to give developers a blueprint for exactly what you want.

Too often, non-technical business owners will come to software developers and say, “I want a product that does [XYZ].” Without realizing how vague of a request that is. There are so many small nuances and little decisions you’re relying on the software developer to make for you. In some cases, that is fine, but the developer will likely not understand your specific industry or your customer base as much as you do. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but you could end up with time and effort put into coding that needs to be changed. If you could start with the process of building it with the digital assets in mind, you can refine the layout or user experience. Then, if you have to make changes, you’re just changing artwork; you’re not changing code. Otherwise, it gets very messy.

Get Stakeholders Invested Early

As a third primary reason, start taking this to potential investors if you’re looking for investment toward the next iteration of your product. You can use the prototype as a visual tool to help pitch your idea. It becomes not only a blueprint for your developers but also potential investors and essential customers. Share the visuals all over the place and get people excited, generate interest, and then you can do things like have people sign up to test the beta, or for pre-order, or even to stay updated. Build metrics that help validate the market.

After those three significant reasons to make an interactive prototype as a minimum viable product, I hope you take this advice for future projects. That is to say, don’t spend tens of thousands of dollars on a coded prototype. Instead, spend only a few thousand on a non-code prototype. In the same amount of money you could pay a programmer or a team to build your coded MVP, you can make multiple iterations of a visual prototype, get user feedback, and know exactly where to go next—springboarding you into the future.

So that’s my two cents; I believe in the Minimum Viable Product strategy. I hope any new entrepreneurs out there, or anyone who’s starting another tech project, will go down the path of creating an MVP, especially ones that don’t involve code. If you have any questions, You can go to our website at www.3rinteractive.com and check out the tech strategy side of our company.

I want everyone to succeed, so if I can help you even with just a conversation and some advice, feel free to reach out to me at jay@3rinteractive.com. I look forward to our next Caffeinated Advice conversation, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.

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