Where Is My MVP?

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome the MVP of NBA 16-2017 Season:...

Wait a minute, it seems to be something wrong. Because, the MVP here I want to talk about is not the Most Valuable Player at all. It is the Minimum Valid Product.

So, what is a Minimum Valid Product? Here are some main features of it:

1. It has the core characteristics of the product.

Minimum Valid Product always has the core characteristics of the product. It provides and only provides the core function. But, why? Here we need to clear the question about the necessity of the Minimum Valid Product.

The human mind is powerful and unconstrained, hence, sometimes it can be not so reliable. When your customer or designer throws a weird plan to you, but unfortunately you cannot convince them, you would need a minimum viable product. Developers will provide a product which only has core functions - Minimum Valid Product - to some target users, and then gather feedback from them to confirm if the product vision is realistic. And this can avoid the potential risk.

2. No fixed form.

Minimum Valid Product doesn't have a fixed form. It can be a prototype, a website, a statistical table, even a Facebook group. Let's have a look at this example: Zappos, the great B2C e-commercial website, had a lot of preparations before its launch. One of the founders, Nick Swinmurn, made a research depending on the feedback from thier website. He made a prediction about the market need, and he made it right. And, another example would be a fitness guidance App. Before the launch, the developing team created a WeChat group and sold the fitness plans to the client. At the time while they were receiving a good feedback, they developed the app at a speedy space.

Well, Minimum Valid Product is such a useful thing, but how to make one?
Here, please allow me to introduce an easy way to create a Minimum Valid Product: build it as a prototype.

In fact, the prototype design itself is also a part of the product design. No matter how minimum the product is, it's still a product. Just like what I said, there's no fixed form of the Minimum Valid Product, prototype is one way to present a Minimum Valid Product too. It's a relatively closer form of a real product.

Here in the prototype design, we should still insist on the characteristics of this kind of product. The core value of Minimum Valid Product is to confirm if the functions meet the needs of users. What's more, you can have multiple choices.

When you need a prototype that looks more closer to an App: Flinto for Mac.

When you need to prototype faster and test in more ways: Mockplus.

When you need comprehensive functions and have enough time: Axure.

Minimum Valid Product prototypes shall only have core functions, any other issues may lead the users to a wrong judgement, in other words, it may lead to wrong decisions.

That's pretty much what I can get about the Minimum Valid Product for now. More details of MVP are already on the way.

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