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.
The test results may reveal that it is feasible – you can make it – but not viable – your target audience doesn’t want it. This is good to know early in your product lifecycle so you don’t waste time and resources defining, developing and delivering something your customers don’t want. You may realize that is a great idea but belongs in another solution in your portfolio or that is much bigger effort – more than just a feature – it may be a whole new module.
My UX Boot Camps have been a MVP for me – an experiment. It started as an idea to put all my published articles in a compendium – which you can buy at Amazon now. Then Laura said “You should do a seminar”… I bounced the idea around with some colleagues who said “a one-day event… a series of workshops” and “call it a ‘boot camp’ – a ‘UX Boot Camp’.” And that is how the UX Boot Camps were born. There are several other related ideas that are coming soon, too – more experiments.
Even the event site, Lessonaire, is an experiment. It is a MVP – a Minimum Viable Product – from GojuLabs, friends who want to build products that make a difference in the lives of their customers. An MVP is a fast way to gather customer feedback while doing continuous development – synchronous customer and product development – putting the right form of customer engagement well in front of ‘design freeze.’
The cool part, is the target audience for the boot camps are perfect reviewers for the event site! It’s funny how it all works out.
We have made some mistakes along the way… we are still working out the email campaign (sorry about that). We are learning fast as we mature the product.