Understanding the principles of Lean UX and MVP
We have had plenty of conversations with our clients recently about following the principles of MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and Lean UX. While many understand what these terms mean; it’s often not understood how these apply to building a websites.
Let’s look at a typical project where the client has made fifty to a hundred assumptions about what features the website will need to have. Instead of spending 6 months building out every feature, we should be focusing on the top ten problems and finding a solution that solves each of these.
What is the minimum we need to create to get to market?
The process involves a simple build, measure, learn cycle, following four steps:
- Declare assumptions
- Validate
- Justify
- And support
- Build MVP:
- wireframe prototype
- Run an experiment:
- user testing
- Feedback and research
- Iterate and improve
We then find out what worked, and what didn’t. We pivot, learn from our research, make the necessary alterations to the prototype and go again.
We will complete as many iterations until we have solved all the problems we declared in the first phase.
Don’t build features, solve problems.
There is no reason to get it right from the start. Clients need to understand that we need permission to do something wrong. Edison completed over a 1000 iterations of the light bulb before getting it right. We need to be learning over growth.
Don’t build features, solve problems.
