Design Your Most Desirable Product, Not Your MVP
Are you thinking about bringing a digital product to life? I know your timelines are tight, your budgets are small, and the boardroom is likely full of decision-makers pulling you every which way. When push comes to shove and you’ve got to get your product in the market, someone will likely tell you to “focus on your MVP” — Minimum Viable Product. Let’s unpack what this concept represents:
- Minimum: Only build minimal functionality “needed.”
- Viable: Build functionality that makes sense for the business. If it’s not viable for the business, it doesn’t get built!
- Product: Your “launch-ready,” minimally functional, business-centric, product!
Further to the above, the word “Viable” is significant to most product people through the lens of Human-Centered Design (HCD).
It’s therefore implied that your MVP should be focused on the business first and (likely) the user second! I would suggest that you consider coming at the issue through a different lens.
Don’t think about your Minimum Viable Product. Think about what could be your Most Desirable Product and build around that.
What is the Most Desirable Product (MDP)?
I like to think of the MDP as similar to the structure of the planet Earth: it has a core, the surrounding mantle (where you’ll find the “liquid hot magma”) and the crust.
- The Core: What main functionality would create the absolute Most Desirable Product for your users (based on the problem you’re trying to solve). This is the core of your launch product.
- The Mantle: What foundational functionality is needed in order to support your core functionality.
- The Crust: Now that you’ve got your core functionality and all supporting functionality defined, you need to validate that the planned product is viable for the business (today or in the future assuming your business can afford a runway).
Without the Earth’s crust, there is nowhere for us (humans) to physically exist — likewise, without the business validation (short or long term), there is no place for your product to exist.
So the MDP does need to consider business viability, but it doesn’t get in the way of the what the product can be at launch.
How do you define YOUR Most Desirable Product?
Now that we share an understanding of the components that define an MDP I’m sure you’re wondering “How do I actually define the Core and the Mantle? What is my most desired functionality? And what other features do I need to support it?”
Your list of features is LONG, and your time is SHORT. So let’s build your MDP.
Identify the Core
The first step is to ensure you know who you’re building for and exactly what you’re building — this may seem obvious, but do you have a clear idea of your target and your “why”? (Check out the Golden Circle if you need clarity on this.)
When I worked on the US Foods digital transformation, the place we were starting from and the place we were going to were fundamentally different.
The starting digital experience was a glorified brochure. Potential clients could learn about US Foods and submit a request to become a client. There was a home-grown ecommerce platform available to established customers, but it was lacking compared to the standard digital shopping experience customers experience every day and was drastically underutilized. US Foods offered a plethora of supporting services for customers, each on its own microsite, entirely disjointed from the main website.
We identified our audiences (and defined personas) for the new digital experience:
- New Prospects: First-time visitors to US Foods (the primary target audience of the original website).
- Leads: A new audience, a New Prospect who has created an account with US Foods but has yet to become a client. They’ll have access to a new and yet-to-be-defined restricted member area that provides value and helps to develop a long and fruitful relationship.
- New Customer: Leads who have been accepted as full customers. They’ll get access to the restricted member area with additional yet-to-be-defined customer-only tools and services. They’ll need to be onboarded to all new functionality including ecommerce.
- Legacy Customers: Customers who are used to mainly interacting with their sales reps in person to place orders and had mainly not used the website as there was no value for them (or minimally used it for the ecommerce capabilities).
For the purpose of our MDP, we had chosen to primarily target Leads and in doing so, our Core functionality would need to sell the benefits of becoming one.
We also needed to define our vision, which (roughly) landed as follows:
By creating a universally accessible personalized experience that delivers the right content, products and services to restaurateurs, we will empower them to “make it.”
The vision boils down to ensuring all restauranteurs receive a personalized benefit from US Foods that can be accessed wherever they are (at home, on the job, or on the go).
With the audience and vision defined, I was able to identify the Most Desirable functionality — the creation of a member area that would provide instant and ongoing value to leads. Whether those leads turn into customers or not, they will appreciate and rely on the value US Foods provides.
Establish your Mantle
The next step is to identify the Core-supporting functionality, but first you’ll need a laundry list of features to cherry-pick from, so if you haven’t done so, brainstorm, dream, and jot down all your ideas (there are no bad ones)! Use whatever tools or process you’re most comfortable with: experience maps, storyboarding, sketching, mind mapping, etc. I’d go further into this topic, but that’s not the focus of this article.
The next step is to identify all of the supporting functionality that is ONLY needed in support of the Core (directly or indirectly). This will likely be a robust list of what you see as dependencies, nice-to-haves and wish list items.
With your list of supporting functionality plentiful, prioritization will be key to defining your Mantle. While it’s nice to have everything when you launch, it’s just not realistic. Only through functional pruning will your launch product take shape — your MDP.
Knowing our Core audience is registered prospects (Leads) and needing to deliver the best value for them meant that we weren’t going to touch the ecommerce platform for launch. This was ideal because enhancements there would’ve been a deep rabbit hole of complexity and effort on the home-grown platform. There was, however, a long list of features that may be needed to create a value-based member area:
- Revamped look, feel and navigational user experience
- Robust and dynamic content platform
- Authentication functionality (register, login, password reset)
- Customer segment identification
- A personalization engine
- A member-only dashboard with customizable reports
- Integrated purchase history and ecommerce integration
- Social media publishing platform for sharing insights
- Integrated restaurant services (marketing services, menu evolution, waste management, employee management, personnel training)
With your (probably) long list of Core-related functionality, you probably need to prioritize everything. The goal of this exercise is to let you draw some clear lines about what’s important to your Core (for launch), and what can wait.
In a previous article, I touched on how you might prioritize leveraging the HCD factors as categories, effectively scoring each feature based on its desirability to the user, viability to the business and feasibility to build. For the purpose of MDP, I would look at each feature in your roadmap and modify the scoring as follows:
- Desirability to the user: Score out of 35 (35 = VERY desirable, 1 = no value)
- Viability to the business: Score out of 20 (20 = VERY viable, 1 = no value)
- Feasibility for the tech team: Score out of 45 (45 = VERY easy to build, 1 being very difficult to build)
The higher the score, the greater the value! You’ll notice that I’ve weighted each category unevenly towards feasibility and desirability — the business viability has a presence, but it’s less important at this point. You may want to tweak how you weight each category, but I find this works for me. With your scoring complete, you’ll have a good guide to deciding what’s in for launch. What comes out of this process should be a Mantle full of functionality that’s easy to build, desired by users, and that supports your Core.
Looking back at the US Foods list of core-related functionality, this is what made the cut:
- Revamped look, feel and navigational user experience
- Robust and dynamic content platform
- Authentication functionality (register, login, password reset)
- Customer segment identification
- A p̵e̵r̵s̵o̵n̵a̵l̵i̵z̵a̵t̵i̵o̵n̵ ̵ recommendations engine
- A member-only dashboard w̵i̵t̵h̵ ̵c̵u̵s̵t̵o̵m̵i̵z̵a̵b̵l̵e̵ ̵r̵e̵p̵o̵r̵t̵s̵̵
- I̵n̵t̵e̵g̵r̵a̵t̵e̵d̵ ̵p̵u̵r̵c̵h̵a̵s̵e̵ ̵h̵i̵s̵t̵o̵r̵y̵ ̵a̵n̵d̵ ̵e̵c̵o̵m̵m̵e̵r̵c̵e̵ ̵i̵n̵t̵e̵g̵r̵a̵t̵i̵o̵n̵̵
- S̵o̵c̵i̵a̵l̵ ̵m̵e̵d̵i̵a̵ ̵p̵u̵b̵l̵i̵s̵h̵i̵n̵g̵ ̵p̵l̵a̵t̵f̵o̵r̵m̵ ̵f̵o̵r̵ ̵s̵h̵a̵r̵i̵n̵g̵ ̵i̵n̵s̵i̵g̵h̵t̵s̵
- I̵n̵t̵e̵g̵r̵a̵t̵e̵d̵ ̵r̵e̵s̵t̵a̵u̵r̵a̵n̵t̵ ̵s̵e̵r̵v̵i̵c̵e̵s̵ ̵(̵m̵a̵r̵k̵e̵t̵i̵n̵g̵ ̵s̵e̵r̵v̵i̵c̵e̵s̵,̵ ̵m̵e̵n̵u̵ ̵e̵v̵o̵l̵u̵t̵i̵o̵n̵,̵ ̵w̵a̵s̵t̵e̵ ̵m̵a̵n̵a̵g̵e̵m̵e̵n̵t̵,̵ ̵e̵m̵p̵l̵o̵y̵e̵e̵ ̵m̵a̵n̵a̵g̵e̵m̵e̵n̵t̵,̵ ̵p̵e̵r̵s̵o̵n̵n̵e̵l̵ ̵t̵r̵a̵i̵n̵i̵n̵g̵)̵
- M̶u̶l̶t̶i̶-̶l̶a̶n̶g̶u̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶s̶u̶p̶p̶o̶r̶t̶
- Mobile a̶n̶d̶ ̶T̶a̶b̶l̶e̶t̶ support
The Crust — Viability validation
We’re almost there! You should now have:
- Personas defined and one or more chosen for your Core
- A vision defined for your product
- A robust product roadmap (and whatever supporting brainstorming assets you created)
- Prioritized launch product roadmap (the Core and Mantle functionality only)
Seeing as our MDP process has been almost entirely focused on everything but the business, now’s the time for a reality check. Speak in whatever language your decision makers speak: prioritized roadmap and vision for product leaders; experience map, sketches and ROUGH wireframes for design leaders; or a PowerPoint presentation with your vision brought to life through your launch plan for business folks.
Personally, I like telling stories through compelling visuals and tying everything back to the defined vision — I do this using PowerPoint. Either way, before you proceed, the business will need to understand the plan and approve of the direction. If you’ve done things right, they’ll see the (possibly longer-term) value to them and immediate value to the user and approve!
Final thoughts
As compared to what your typical MVP process might look like, the end result may be similar, but how you got there, and your overall mindset should ensure your product is even more successful.
The Most Desirable Product process may not work in all scenarios, and like all design process tools, it’s more important to understand the tools in your arsenal so when an appropriate situation arises, you choose the right tool. Perhaps this will be the right tool for you next time you’re launching a product and you’re asked to “define your MVP”
If you’re curious about the evolution of US Foods, you can check out the live website.
If you have any questions about any of this or just want to connect, I’m pretty easy to find!
