How To Design And Develop A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Through Lean UX

Leveraging the benefits of Lean UX while building an MVP is becoming the standard norm that many software developers have begun to realize and embrace.  When you come up with an app concept, it would be followed up with an elaborate plan and a rosy idea about how it would be launched. There is a detailed concept, a product with advanced features and offerings, seamless internal strategy, approvals and nods from the stakeholders. This will be followed by flawless QA flawlessly, release of product and eventually, a survey on how the app is performing in the market.  

Though effective, it is a highly expensive and painstaking process that most companies cannot afford to do, both in the concept of time and space (the product may not find space in the market anymore). 

An MVP, Minimum Viable Product is the best way to test the feasibility of the product. In this article, we will stress the importance of Lean UX, the design aspect of your product, to help you determine the next step of your product. Since we’ve already discussed the steps of building an MVP, in this article, we will go a bit further and explain how this can be done with Lean UX. Here are some points to note:

• Creating a product that people actually need and use

With Lean UX, it is possible to create a product that users will really enjoy using, so the best possible method to release such a product would be to follow agile methodologies. This way, it is possible to run over the details of the product, and fine-tune it before its release. The iterative cycles would allow the developer team to move in a collaborative, cross-functional manner. 

• It focuses on the three main concepts – think, develop/create and analyze Lean UX is thus an agile method 

This concept gives developers the opportunity to innovate, create assumptions and based on that, craft a design. With this comes the last stage i.e. analysis or feedback collection from users. The focus in this scenario would be quick solutions and iterative cycles with the added bonus of a flawless design process that drive results. 

• Puts forth a shorter and faster, but highly effective conceptualization to deployment sequence 

The design phase of product development moves logically and with perfection starting from conceptualization, followed by success at each stage, and then flowing onto the next stage, covering all phases – Conceptualization, Product initiation, Design planning, Product development, Quality Testing and Deployment. This process is far better than the traditional waterfall method because the stages are far more iterative with the flexibility to change and develop. The product development process itself much faster, is based on user inputs and data. 

A Lean UX product is the succinct version of the product itself, and also the functional version of what people can use. Hence, it cannot be compared with prototyping at all. Just as MVPs are markedly different from prototyping, Lean UX MVPs are products that go about in a circular motion of Build, Measure, Learn and Repeat! There is no stifling of innovation and creativity, and developers do not work in compartments, but instead, give up all preconceived notions, and just bring out the true nature of the product.

• Executing Lean UX

Being different from traditional UX, Lean UX focuses on agility between teams and places importance on the design aspect of the final feature set. With excellent collaboration within the teams, the product is out much faster. So here’s a run through of the core three-step process that we mentioned earlier:

• Build

Building an MVP entails contextual research wherein there will be a review of usability testing with feedback from people to observe and learn their interaction and engagement with the product. Contextual inquiry would bring to light any problems that are likely to arise when the actual product hits the market. Build the product after UX research and move on to the next step, Measure.

• Measure

Once the Minimum Viable Product is ready, it goes to the testing phase where people engage (or did not) with the product. Collect all the valuable data through the feedback and iterate the product until you are sure you’ve covered it all. In order to do this more productively, your team can set benchmarks by analyzing what users spend more time on. For example, users might like a particular feature on the product, and they might spend more time on it, whereas, they might ignore some other feature totally. 

• Learn

This is a major advantage and attribute of LeanUX. With the data collected from the feedback, it is now time to make intelligent decisions on the next steps to continue with the product, what features to include, and what to abort! 

Conclusion 

The design step of MVP is something you cannot ignore. Following the LeanUX concept would help you design a usable and valuable product for the user, and actually see it moving as a potential tool towards business growth.