“What should our MVP look like? How might we test our product with close to no budget?”
by Marvin Cheung, Head of Research and Strategy
Your Minimum Viable Product should be the minimum product necessary to test your most critical assumptions. Oftentimes the assumption is user need. Recall the statement in one of the earlier sections: “Customer X needs Y but only Z is available. This is because of A. As a result, we hypothesize that they will be interested in solution B. Our team is uniquely positioned to develop it because of C.” - Does Customer X really want solution B? Does C give you a competitive advantage?
Henrik Kniberg’s car analogy is frequently quoted to demonstrate what an MVP should look like: If you hypothesize that people need a better mode of transportation than walking, the first iteration should be a skateboard (a board with wheels), followed by a bicycle (increased control), a motorcycle (add automation), and finally a car (for comfort). This is in contrast to if you were to use the same resources to build a car from front to back; in which case, the hypothesis cannot be tested until the car is fully built.
Testing your MVP does not need to be expensive. Below we have provided a few low-budget ways to do so:
Begin with low-risk, low-cost, qualitative user research methods. Qualitative user research can help you figure out why people act the way they do. What do your mentors think about your idea?
Expand the circle from which you conduct user research. Talk to your users. What do they think about your idea? What do people at social events think about your idea? Is there a user group for your product you were previously unaware of?
Scale your qualitative user research program. Create a landing page describing your idea with a mailing list sign up form and a few mockups. Personally reach out to prospective customers. What feedback are they giving you? How much more developed does the idea need to be before you can release a private beta? Are you targeting the right user group?
Begin quantitative user research. Quantitative user research can help you quantify how attractive your solution is to your target audience but it can be costly and opaque. When users are interacting with your product online, you can see where they exit a page but it is difficult to tell why they did. You will have to rely on A/B tests and more ads to test your hypotheses if you only use quantitative methods. As such, we generally recommend exhausting your qualitative user research options before you move on to quantitative user research, even then qualitative and quantitative user research needs to go hand in hand. Quantitative is not necessarily better than qualitative. Linkedin, Google Ads, Microsoft Bing Ads are some of the platforms that give free ad credits.
Recommended reading:
Kniberg, Henrik. “Making sense of MVP (Minimum Viable Product) – and why I prefer Earliest Testable/Usable/Lovable”. Crisp, 25 January 2016. https://blog.crisp.se/2016/01/25/henrikkniberg/making-sense-of-mvp [https://perma.cc/N4BY-ZD3M]