MVP: Minimum Viable Prototype
Build a mix of hard problems and proof of concept use cases
A minimum viable prototype for a new concept showcases 3–4 use cases to test, learn from, and make a decision to move forward with the concept towards execution in the market or to shelf the concept. For comparison, a real product that gets executed may have 60–70 use cases. So what kind of use cases should a minimum viable prototype show?
- Do you spend all your time on whiz-bang proof points that elicit ooh’s and ahh’s that get people excited for the concept? No!
- Do you focus purely on the hardest, technically-challenging, earthmoving problems that must be solved to actually build this concept? No!
You need a mix of both proof-of-concept and hard problem use cases to excite business owners to believe in the vision, and build their confidence that they can execute on this if they add it to their roadmap now. So if you have three or four use cases in a minimum viable prototype, one or two should be hard problems, and the rest are use cases that sell the concept.
What makes a hard problem?
A hard problem may not be the exciting part of the concept, but it is a non-trivial element that is required for it to work. For example, a hard problem use case may be signing-in (aka: identifying who you are, to give you a personalized experience), because you need to solve the user privacy and security hard problem. Or another hard problem example is the use case of moving a file from one device to your new whiz-bang concept device.
The proof of concept use cases often show the “wouldn’t it be amazing if…” while ignoring the reality of how to setup the context for the whiz-bang amazingness to actually happen. The setup that’s often not so glamorous, or feels like a drag on the experience.
Solving hard problems identifies more hard problems.
When you solve one hard problem, you can then identify what will be the other hard problems that will need to be solved. This reduces the risk for someone taking an innovation concept into execution because they can better plan for what resources are needed to execute it successfully.
If you don’t solve any hard problems in your minimum viable prototype, then the risk and execution cost is still a mystery black box for the business owner. They may choose not to pursue the concept since it takes too much decision making energy to decide on the unknown risk.
Minimum Viable Prototype Example
We were building a minimum viable prototype (we called it a UX mockup) for an immersive shopping concept, where you get to stand in front of a large screen and virtually try on clothing that’s displayed true to size and how it will fit on you. Ooh! Ahh! The hard problem? You need to get your body scanned before you can do this virtual try on experience, so our smoke-and-mirrors prototype included what the experience might be for how you get your body scanned.
Building and showing this minimum viable prototype brought up so many more hard problems, both technical and experiential, that we knew we’d need to dig deep into and solve for a viable go-to-market product. If we would have hand-waved the part of how we get your body scanned to do the immersive shopping concept, then we would have missed the actual core of what our product needed to solve. This core drove our product roadmap for what we would pilot first and what we needed to build year over year to achieve this vision.
So how did we decide on what to include in the minimum viable prototype? We built a story map out of sticky notes. We quickly agreed on what’s out of scope and didn’t spend time flushing out those areas. I sketched out the core narrative on the top row, and then we wrote down how this may be achieved below. Sometimes theses notes were open questions or new sub-concepts that came up during the discussion. From this we were able to pick out how we would showcase the concept with a few key use cases, including the hard problem of body scanning. The open questions and new ideas that were not chosen for the prototype were not tossed out, but added to our vision roadmap.
This minimum viable prototype was a success in that got the concept approved to be developed further and eventually lead to a pilot of with a customer and the creation of an IEEE standards group around the emerging technology.
This article was inspired by the Building an Innovation Strategy that Works webinar by Sarah Laiwala, a Director of Digital Experiences at The Walt Disney Company.
In this webinar, we will discuss how to set up an Innovation organization that succeeds at taking products to market, as opposed to one that prototypes ideas that sit on the shelves for years. We will talk through iterative Innovation, key trends and the criticality of business alignment and collaboration.
This article also references work for a project called Immersive Shopping, that culminated in an IEEE Standards group and a pilot between Intel and Zappos for creating your personalized model to virtually try on jeans online before you buy them.
