[HN Gopher] How to Build a Minimum Lovable Product
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How to Build a Minimum Lovable Product
Author : dundalk03
Score : 70 points
Date : 2022-03-25 05:57 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (userpilot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (userpilot.com)
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| I think this falls into the problem of building something that is
| potentially interesting.
|
| If the problem is hair on fire bad, UX doesn't matter.
| dchuk wrote:
| > If the problem is hair on fire bad, UX doesn't matter.
|
| Just replying to make sure you know how profoundly true this
| is. And if you want the secret to mega success: solve a hair on
| fire problem with great ux and you will win almost
| automatically.
| drBonkers wrote:
| How do you identify hair-on-fire problems?
| jschveibinz wrote:
| One good way is to live them. Those who have worked for
| 5-10 years in any given field (not just software) can
| easily identify the most valuable "hair on fire" problems
| to solve.
|
| Otherwise, consider these factors:
|
| 1. How many people are affected?
|
| 2. How much does the problem cost (in time or money)?
|
| 3. How much extra money can be made by solving the problem?
|
| 4. How much time can be saved?
|
| 5. What is currently blocking the way to dramatic
| improvements (in anything)?
|
| 6. What is causing people real pain, fear, suffering, or
| dramatic inconvenience in a large enough market?
|
| That's a good start, anyway. Good luck with the journey.
| chefandy wrote:
| If you run an established service or have a certain kind
| of userbase? Sure. For a startup with a consumer-focused
| mobile app? Maybe not. For them, not enough people liking
| your product to build a reputation is a "hair on fire"
| problem. In most shopping apps for example, most
| customers would never even know if the service had 12
| hours of downtime per week. An extra step during the
| checkout sequence, however, and you'll never see them
| again if there's an alternative.
|
| Developers see interfaces and user flows as a place to
| expose controls so users can operate the software. To
| users, the interface is the software and bad interface =
| bad software.
|
| So it's super context dependent.
| hyuuu wrote:
| Would love to know this
| JamesBarney wrote:
| 1. You already are deeply familiar with an industry
|
| Or
|
| 2. You can tell when you talk to people who have the
| problem. They get really excited about having it solving
| for them and don't care about the price it costs to solve
| it.
| lyime wrote:
| Minimum viable and minimum lovable should be the same thing.
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| Too many people fall into the trap that an MVP is meant for the
| end user. The V stands for _viable_. You are simply testing if
| something is actually possible to do and fits a real use case or
| not. The consumers are:
|
| 1. Yourself - was it just a stupid thought in your head or
| actually something useful?
|
| 2. Investors - see this isn't just a pipe dream but an actual
| working product. Now give me money.
|
| 3. _Maybe_ a very small set of actual users to act as a focus
| group and tell you how stupid you are.
|
| Once an idea has passed validation by 1, 2 and 3, that's when
| development can _start_. That's when you build an MLP or alpha or
| beta or whatever else you want to call it.
|
| If you think you are just going to slap a logo on a MVP and start
| charging $10/month for it, no shit people will laugh you off.
| amelius wrote:
| So something that you _barely_ love ...
|
| Doesn't sound any better, to be honest.
| cperciva wrote:
| It could be something you love but which is only barely a
| product. My (almost) 1 year old could qualify -- very lovable
| but there really isn't much of a market. ;-)
| amelius wrote:
| Better call it "Lovable Minimum Product" then.
| davedx wrote:
| Seems to be popular at the moment to say "MVP has failed" without
| showing any evidence how.
|
| Just another attempt to kick start one more senseless hype cycle
| for no good reason
| javajosh wrote:
| When I read these kinds of posts it feels like I'm reading a
| monks treatise on how to fall madly, passionately in love. It's
| like, really hopeful, but I don't think great software is made in
| this way. It seems to always _start out_ with something
| unaccountably useful, and building out the business-y stuff comes
| second. This post feels like it was written for businesses that
| are fungible software experiments ( "just add money!")
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I like the approach.
|
| For myself, I have always _loathed_ the MVP concept, and that has
| not made me fans; especially amongst this crowd. I 've learned to
| just bite my tongue, and do things the way I do.
|
| I'm in the later stages of a fairly ambitious native Swift UIKit
| iOS app (around 40 screens). It has been in progress for about 18
| months (over two years, if you consider the backend, which I also
| wrote).
|
| During that time, I have been sharing the built app with the
| team, using Apple's TestFlight beta-test system. I made my first
| TestFlight release on October 4, 2020. Since then, I've made
| around 600 releases. It's abusing the TestFlight process, which
| is really supposed to be an "end-stage" service, but it's worked
| well for us, and the Quality of the app is through the roof.
|
| We have also made several _massive_ pivots, and have settled on a
| UX that we think users will love, and will address the needs of
| the community that it Serves (It 's a free app, for a non-
| profit).
|
| I couldn't even _imagine_ this being out there, during the last
| year or so (when we first thought we had a "viable" product). It
| would have completely destroyed any credibility we had (and we
| actually have quite a bit).
| nikodunk wrote:
| I LOVE this concept. Condenses so many missed points about MVP
| into a very simple acronym: Encapsulates succinctly "people
| wanting this product", making it "good enough to recommend to
| friends", etc. etc.
| lucb1e wrote:
| I don't get this writing copy thing. It first seemed like the
| tweet was quoted and captioned "hard pass" with a repulsed gif
| maybe because a copywriter doesn't even know how to spell their
| job title, saying writing copy instead? But the article keeps
| using the word so that can't be it.
|
| Not sure if copywriting (with or without space) is a thing but
| copywriter and copyediting is: https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/copywriting
|
| Writing copy, no idea what that's supposed to be:
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/writing%20copy
|
| Anyone here in the know of this jargon? And how is it related to
| "MLP"s (to stay in the custom jargosphere)?
| [deleted]
| kareemm wrote:
| I'm really coming to dislike this type of article. It's vague
| platitudes rather than a practitioner who has earned scars and
| thus has the experience to describe the nitty gritty why and how
| beyond the vague recommendations.
|
| For example:
|
| 1. Has the Userpilot team failed at building and MVP and
| succeeded with an MLP? If so what did they learn and why?
|
| 2. Lots of people have succeeded with an MVP approach. They
| describe a handful of things you can do wrong when building an
| MVP... but what if you DON'T do those things that they claim lead
| to MVP failure?
|
| 3. Digging into one of the recommendations - don't sacrifice
| delighters. They talk about how they wouldn't include the Asana
| unicorn in their MLP and end with "balance delighters with
| effort". Fine. But HOW do you do that? What framework can you
| provide ME to do that?
|
| This smacks of a writer doing a Google Research Project to offer
| up hand-wavy advice. 0/10 would not recommend.
| productceo wrote:
| Let me know when you would like me to invent yet another word to
| call the same thing. How's Minimum Promising Product?
|
| If MVP does not solve a real problem, it does not validate the
| correct hypothesis, so what the post describes as an MVP that is
| not MLP is not an MVP.
|
| And an MLP executed to be not MVP would be a thing built to be
| built, or taking unnecessarily risky bets spending unnecessary
| cost.
|
| Cut the crap with fighting words with words. If the community
| used the word MVP to help introduce a more useful concept, real
| builders focus on executing it correctly, to the best of our
| ability, giving the inventors fair credit and most charitable
| interpretation. Alas, we have content marketers among us, and
| those who failed and wish to blame it on being given wrong
| instructions to follow, inventing empty words like MLP.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Why are you so upset about words? if you don't like a word,
| don't use it or make up your own! it's a beautiful thing.
| vmception wrote:
| the trigger is recently joining an organization or getting a
| new CEO or manager that uses these cringy aspirational
| unnecessary words
|
| and listening to the entire internet say "if you don't like
| one tiny aspect of your work environment, its a huge red flag
| for a bunch of other stuff so just leave!" as if such choice
| in the matter is really there and that the next organization
| doesn't have some other tiny cringy thing
|
| so then if you ignore that advice, you're stuck with the
| childish babble that the people in your organization use to
| cope
| productceo wrote:
| Interesting you being up the other POV. I experienced this
| from the opposite side.
|
| A teammate once told me he is frustrated with being asked
| to work on an MVP, that is minimum cost, minimum polish,
| minimally functioning. He said he wanted to work on MLP, so
| I said he can call it MLP if he wants, but what we must
| build does not change: prove the concept minimally such
| that we can verify whether the problem we seek to solve is
| a real problem in the first place, then we can add as much
| polish as needed once we know it's a good problem to solve.
| If we think customers are experiencing some problem that,
| in order to solve minimally, we need to give them polish,
| then the polish is a part of the MVP/MLP. Otherwise, it is
| not. It doesn't matter what we call it. What matters is
| what we must do.
|
| He thought that my attitude taking the distinction between
| MLP and MVP lightly was a sign that I do not care about the
| best interest of our customers, and left the company.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I just ignore stuff I don't like, it's a lot easier.
| [deleted]
| labster wrote:
| A word you create because you don't like another word is
| called a blortle. I just made it up.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| no cap?
| vmception wrote:
| cap
| yawnxyz wrote:
| I like it! Seems to happen quite a bit in academia (e.g.
| microbiology)
| mromanuk wrote:
| I don't like blortle, I would prefer a raifin. See? I'm
| already blorting
| Jensson wrote:
| A word you create because you need a random word is called
| a fizz, and when you need another fizz you call it a buzz.
| arendtio wrote:
| The book "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries helped me understand
| what an MVP is about. It is about learning. So 'viable' doesn't
| mean someone can barely use it to do X. It is more like an
| experiment that should answer a question (an hypothesis).
|
| So an MVP can be crappy, as long as it helps to answer the
| question it is supposed to answer. The lovable part should come,
| once you understand your environment and can build something that
| people actually need.
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| That doesn't sound like a "product" to me nor does it sound
| "viable." That sounds like a regular old prototype.
| soneca wrote:
| I think of prototype as something to show that you can build
| something. No end user uses a prototype. End users use MVPs.
| I agree with GP
| rco8786 wrote:
| It's almost like it's a pedantic argument from the start
| strainer wrote:
| Viable doesn't usually mean a thing is only just or barely
| sufficient. It usually means a thing is _at least_ sufficient.
| It means a thing is _more than_ good enough to be viable. The
| question "is it viable?" is used to find out if something is
| at the point of being "good enough" or greater, and something
| more than good enough will still be "perfectly viable".
| "Minimal Viable" doesn't extend to great, but it does also
| reach perfect viability. Describe something as "barely viable"
| suggests its not quite viable. Viability is all about passing
| the threshold of being in fact viable. As viable is a binary
| qualifier, the "Minimal" part more intelligibly constrains the
| "Product". Its a minimal product that is yet viable, not a
| product with minimal viability.
|
| In the same vein "Minimal Lovable Product", shouldn't mean a
| product which someone could only barely love :]
| noodle wrote:
| > Minimum Lovable Products (MLPs) add more focus on the idea that
| whatever you're putting out in the market has to solve a real-
| world problem from the beginning
|
| Is this not already the definition of an MVP? As they put it - a
| skeleton that doesn't solve anything - isn't really a viable
| product...
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