What’s Love Got To Do With It?
If you are expecting to read about birds and bees, and mushy feelings, you may not be wrong. In this case, however, I am writing about the feelings evoked when we use different products.
Last week, I saw a post by Product School talking about MVP, MLP and MMP. Here you go https://productschool.com/blog/product-management-2/minimum-lovable-product/. The immediate thought that came to me as a user-centric PM who is also focused on revenue optimization was “MLP over MVP” but then I saw so many people giving several arguments on why it should be MVP first and I did see the validity in their points, even though I am sticking to my initial reaction (Sue me). So, I am bringing this here for you to weigh in and share your thoughts- Minimum Viable Product or Minimum Lovable Product? (Let’s not even get into the Minimum Marketable Product)
For those new to Product Management, I will try to break down the three (3) so you have a clearer idea of what I am talking about.
In the book- “The Lean Startup” Eric Reis (author of the book) defined 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
What this means is that an MVP is that version of a Product/Solution that is released for testing by early adopters and to collect relevant feedback, without too much input of resources. It always has only the barest minimum in terms of features.
Next, the MLP.
An MLP is that version of the product that not only has the barest minimum features for data collection, but is centred around usability and emotional design as well as reliability. It targets the users' emotions by providing them with a product they can fall in love with or not as drastically, a product that caters to a core pain point.
Contrary to an MVP that is typically not marketable, an MLP is marketable, solves the user needs and done right, provides significant moments of user delight that lead to satisfaction, stickiness, high NPS scores, and, of course, retention. An MLP puts the customer front and centre of the design process and revolves around what your customer segments would most likely like the most.
I just saw this quote on https://krit.com/how-to-scope-your-mlp and I find it apt!
A Minimum Loveable Product is a complete story; it has a clear purpose (its function) and just the right set of features. It’s not minimum releasable crap or a hacked together and barely functional product 👎. Rather, it’s an insanely valuable package of one or two core functionalities that lets you start small, gather feedback, and build up to exactly what customers want.
So the floor is open. Please tell me… MVP or MLP?
