MVP is dead. Bring on the MLP!
Earlier in October 2020, Paytm launched the Mini App Store. Paytm Mini App Store offers direct access, discovery, browsing, and payment experience of auto-updated versions of all Mini Apps on its platform. For every developer the one thing they need to focus on is good design and experience. And for that we need to focus on building Minimum Lovable Products and not just Minimum Viable Products.
If you are familiar with the Lean start-up methodology, you are aware of the MVP, aka the Minimum Viable Product.
The MVP is perhaps the most sought after thing for any startup, as it enables them to go from a state of zero to one. It allows the product to come to life and start to engage with the consumers. It is also one of the things taught most at B schools, Design Thinking bootcamps, and almost every Entrepreneurship course.
The minimum viable product (MVP) stresses the impact of learning in new product development. Eric Ries, defined an MVP as that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.
However, it is high time we move from the Minimum Viable Product to the Minimum Lovable Product. There is a growing voice around the creation of more MLPs than MVPs. With multiple product based unicorns in India, over the past few years, and each targeting the next billion users, we need to push towards creating more MLPs than MVPs.
This requires a substantial mindset shift. It requires relentless emphasis on customer satisfaction. It requires everyone to believe that a bare minimum is not enough. It requires one to keep a good experience at the core of your product offering.
India has matured considerably well over the past decade as a product country. Even in the hinterlands, people are accessing digital tools like never before. Digital natives are driving the adoption of digital tools for financial services, education, entertainment, like never before. The expectations of these users have changed. It’s time we move to the MLP stage for going from zero to one.
“It’s better to build something that a small number of users love, than a large number of users like.” — Sam Altman, Y Combinator
With low entry barriers to creating products, easily available tools to create and monitor stuff, there are a lot more products being created than ever before. In such a scenario, creating only MVPs stands the risk of users migrating to a competitor faster than before.
Back in the days, MVP followed the philosophy of Form follows Function. The aim of the MVPs were to create something that does a task well enough, introduce it to the users, and learn from them. They often played with a blue ocean strategy, owing to low competition. The main aim of the MVP was to thus introduce the product in the market and keep working on a version for a later release. This later version often was an engineering and design overhaul, fed by the continuous learning from the customers. This also typically came in later, when there is a certain brand value created about the product.
MLPs on the other hand, go by the philosophy of System follows Experience. You design your Product System around the Experience. And when you think of the system, only the beautiful interface is no good. The question we need to be asking is, how good is your system that revolves around the product and the task it has set forth to do. Is your system well designed to guarantee a high NPS, and good customer satisfaction?
Minimum Lovable Product is highly usable, addresses a need for the users, solves a problem well, is functional, and pays a huge attention to the feedback of its customers. The key is to not have any component feel broken, as has been the case with MVPs often.
We can no longer rely on the creation of MVP products for users, just because they are using digital tools for the first time. In fact, it is our responsibility to create MLP so that the users totally Iove the product.
At Paytm Design, we set forth our goal to create more Minimum Lovable Products, that would be loved by millions!
- By Design Team
