Last updated on June 1st, 2023
Product teams in startups often have limited budgets and deadlines. With the limited resources available, they are tasked to develop new products, with no feedback, users, or feature requests. As an experienced professional designer experienced with these problems iTechnolabs understand how challenging this is.
There is a way to deal with uncertainty, remain focused on users, and deliver your product on time and within budget using an MVP development framework. Minimum viable products are untouched prototype that has the minimum of features needed to address the most pressing user issues. MVPs can help product teams understand more about their intended customers while taking less time in the process of design and development. They also lower the risk of design by allowing designers to try out their assumptions earlier.
In this blog, I’ll outline four steps that are essential to master how to master the MVP development process. To help us envision this method, we’ll create an app for food delivery similar to Zomato and Swiggy.
Steps to Mastering the MVP Development Process
- Define the MVP With a PRD
- Organize the MVP’s Information Architecture
- Create Wireframes and Prototypes
- Complete Design QA
Step 1: Define the MVP With a PRD
The first step of the MVP development process is to establish the product’s goals, functionalities, features, and behavior using the help of a document describing the product’s requirements. It is the PRD in the single point of reference, bringing all the project teams to the needs of the user. It should contain:
- The goal (problem assertion).
- Information about the idea (user personas stories of users, user personas, and epics).
- Analysis (assumptions of constraints, assumptions, and Success metrics).
Objective
- Problem Statement Â
A Problem statement describes the actual user issue that the product is designed to solve. It shouldn’t be more than one sentence and provide that the reader is aware of the goal of the product.
For instance: “We need to connect hungry customers to great restaurants that can deliver their orders ASAP.”
Ideation Information
- User Personas Â
User personas are individual user is an imaginary character who is the user’s type and performs a series of distinctive actions. Each persona is a part of solving the issue identified in the statement of the problem.
Utilizing personas used in MVP development design helps teams comprehend and connect with the end-users, and thus design their products to their requirements.
Analysis
- Assumptions Â
Assumptions are the things we believe to see from the product or what the user’s behavior will be. For instance, we assume the fact that Dante the Deliveryman works in restaurants during meal times. But his schedule and the restaurant hours may not match.
- Constraints
Constraints provide possible limitations to the product. For example, poor cell reception could mean that Chloe the customer won’t get notifications regarding what’s happening with her purchase.
If we can address the constraints and assumptions within the process of PRD we can address them earRemove term: mvp development process mvp developmenlier and deliver more enjoyable experiences to the end user.
- Success Metrics Â
Effective performance metrics like engagement, churn rate, and session duration are vital to measuring MVP performance. The development of these metrics allows us to verify our initial product idea and aid in the process of development.
In the app for food delivery, We can add:
- The number of downloads.
- The percentage of sign-ups.
- In the application, you can track time.
Step 2: Organize the MVP’s Information Architecture
The next stage of this MVP development process involves labeling and organizing all the digital content like sections, pages, and features. The result is known as Information Architecture (IA) and is divided into two components:
- Determining the content of the product as well as
- The process of determining the hierarchy of content
Define the App’s Content
To define a product’s content (pictures, music, text, videos, etc. ) We first study trends in the market, competition, and our customers. To link the dots among different content types, we build a “quick and dirty” mind map that includes topics, branches, and subtopics. Mind mapping helps us organize all of our content in one location and connect relevant subjects.
Mind map apps will include:
- A topic for restaurants that includes subtopics for menus as well as order logs and customer pages in the database.
- The menu subtopic comprises drinks and food choices, as well as special offers.
Determine the Content Hierarchy
The next step is to decide the best method to show your content i.e. how to structure it. One way to organize content is through the sorting of cards using users to organize topics into logical groups. This guarantees that the Information Architecture will be arranged following the expectations of the user instead of based on the assumptions of the product team.
To conduct a card sort:
- Pick topics that reflect the main content of the product.
- Group the topics with the user.
- Label each group according to the user’s name and then discuss the reasoning behind each choice.
- Repeat the three steps with the additional users.
- Review the results and search for common themes across the different groups and look for common patterns between the. This will help product designers better understand how their product’s user experience.
Step 3: Create Wireframes and Prototypes
Create a Wireframe
With our content well-defined and well-organized, we can create the app’s fundamental UI layout using wireframing tools. There are numerous advantages to MVP wireframing, for instance, it lets us visualize our app while making it slim.
To develop our app for food delivery We’ll wireframe the app in two phases:
- Draw the layout of each screen, including the size and position.
- Create an elementary UI component library that includes headers and footers, content blocks, and menus. These UI components will be used as placeholders until we transform our wireframe into a high-definition prototype.
Now we have a wireframe using which we can visualize the basic layout of the app and its capabilities.
Also Read: How can Custom POS Software Benefit Retailers to Improve Customer Experience?
Test With Users Â
Our MVP procedure follows our ” measure, learn, repeat” user testing method to pinpoint and correct the friction points that could be causing friction early.
In our app for food delivery, we observe that customers aren’t using the filters within the app to filter kinds of food, prices, or distance. We’ll conduct two kinds of tests- moderated and unmoderated–to gather the most feedback to determine the reason.
- Testing that is unmoderated for quantitative data using Maze by measuring the effectiveness of users in an activity Unmoderated testing provides an indirect evaluation of usability using quantitative data. What is the benefit of this type of testing? It provides reliable statistical information on a specific issue without having “random” results that might affect our responses to the issue.
For instance, Maze’s Click funnel shows a significant drop off on the filter’s screen as well as an extremely low rate of completion for this job. Users are experiencing issues with using filters. But, if testing was unmoderated that is the majority of feedback.
- Moderated testing of qualitative data using Userfeel: Through observing users to determine the way they accomplish the task, and then asking questions in the following steps, moderated testing provides a direct assessment of usability by using qualitative data. What is the benefit of this kind of testing? We can pinpoint exactly what aspects of the job are challenging.
For instance, a Userfeel recording could show the user having difficulty understanding how filters function and also identify the root of the issue, e.g., the filter text is too small, which makes it difficult to read.
With this information, we can improve our wireframe to develop an improved filtering feature that is user-friendly.
Develop a High-fidelity Prototype Â
After having our wireframe MVP verified, it’s necessary to update and create the interactivity-based prototyping process. Contrary to the basic wireframing hi-res (hi-fi) prototypes make use of the highest quality of pixel UI animation and design and are much more similar in appearance and function in comparison to what the end product will look like. They can be used to determine important visual affirmations as well as gather real-time feedback regarding the MVP design.
We’ll convert our wireframe to an interactive prototype using:
- We are fine-tuning our branding on our UI including colors, palettes as well as typography.
- Utilizing advanced animations, including scrolling, tabbing, or micro-interactions.
Step 4: Complete Design QA
We’ll also confirm that everything appears as expected and is running smoothly by moving through the prototype and confirming that:
- Our MVP matches the initial idea of the product.
- The user flow is natural.
- All possible use cases were looked at.
- All bugs that were discovered during development have been eliminated.
We’ll then summarize and report any remaining issues with the team working on development in QAS tickets. These issues can be resolved during one two-week cooling down period before the launch of the MVP.
Thinking of creating a Food Delivery App using MVP Development Process?
Enhance Your Design Process and MVP Development Framework with iTechnolabs Â
In the realm of startup product development Design resources are in short supply. The MVP process allows designers to build and launch user-friendly solutions on time and without breaking their budgets.
This four-step MVP framework has allowed iTechnolabs to ensure that our designs are user-centric every time. Check it out and you’ll learn to consider the user’s needs when you want to develop app designs.
