Minimum Desirable Product

Andrew Chen shares in Minimum Desirable Product:

“a business-driven company might try to assess viability upfront, thinking about metrics and revenue and market sizes. A feasibility (engineering) oriented organization might try to pick a super hard technology first (P2P! Mapreduce! Search!), then try to build a business around it. And a desirability-focused team might focus first and foremost on the target customer, their context and behavior, and build a product experience around that.”

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) center around the business perspective. It asks the question “what is the minimum product I have to build to figure out whether I have a business?” You might do that from testing signups on landing pages or putting up price points and collecting payment information to helps assess the true viability of a product.

A Minimum Desirable Product (MDP) approach focuses primarily on whether you are providing a great product experience that creates value for your customers.

Artur Kiulian shares in 10 tips on Minimum Desirable Product:

“MVP is the version of a new product that brings back the maximum amount of validated learning about your customers with the least effort.” While “MDP is the version of a product that qualifies the interest in it and the need for its existence.” MVP kickstarts customer development before you even have customers.

Andrew Chen shares in Customer Development for the “Winner Take All” Consumer Web the “Desirability-First” strategy:

  1. Understand user goals
  2. Create a Minimum Desirable Product
  3. Listen to users and maximize Love
  4. Iterate to a great product experience

All three perspectives are important – Viability, Feasibility and Desirability. If it is not capable of producing a profit or achieving your goal, then it is not viable. If the technology does not exist or cannot it be created that can accomplish this at a reasonable cost or in an acceptable amount of time, then it is not feasible. But if no one wants or needs it then why bother.