MVPr: Minimum Viable Prototype
Prototype User Experience in Hardware Products.
The very first concept of Google Glass was build using coat-hanger and a pico projector attached to a laptop. The image below shows Larry Page holding its earlier prototype.
In the chaos of producing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) from a concept, we often look over stages of product development that can inform our MVP. An MVP is the initial concept of the “product”. A product by definition is “a commodity that generates revenue”- short something that can sell. Hence the MVP should capture the idea of the commodity that can showcase potential to sell.
The Google team developed this “Coat-Hanger” version of the product not to sell it but to experience the key feature of the product — augmenting data in real environment. So this version was not a MVP, but rather it delivered something very important that decided the fate of the product — the experience. We can call this as the Minimum Viable Prototype — an ancestral version of the product that prototypes the key value proposition.
For StartUps, the MVPr becomes very critical. It is the first implementation of the idea the members are passionate to follow. Depending upon the complexity of the experience, it take 4 -14 days to come up with a version. The idea is to validate the experience and if at all accepted, the team would develop a MVP to take it further.
An MVPr can have the following characteristics —
- Use Easily Materials: The idea is to prototype the version very quickly without investing much time the physical attribute of the product. cardboard, wireframes (hanger), off the shelf components (gloves, boots, shoes) etc will help you put “tangibilize” the concept quicker.
- Off the shelf electronics: Raspberry Pi — Arduino the shit out of it! They have an excellent maker eco-system that can help developed prototypes easily. Sensors, Actuators, Cameras, GPS units, can be starting point.
- Concentrate of the System Design: It goes without saying that experience will depend more how the hardware architecture of the prototype is designed. The leaner and less computational expensive the code on better chips — the faster the system responds, hence better the experience.
The developer has to then extrapolate the prototype to an MVP by factoring scalability, manufacturability, cost etc. But MVPr serves as a great step in Product Development (Hardware) to help us experience the concept. They offer a very unique outcome in the entire Product Development process.
MVPr is about prototyping the experience — the key value proposition of the product.
Follow up read: The story of Product Development for Ziro — our robotics kit.
