Create a “Delightful” Product (Minimum Delightful Product)

Minimum Viable Product vs. Minimum Delightful Product

One of the most popular ideas that has emerged in the development industry in recent years is the “Minimum Viable Product (MVP)” concept. By concentrating on creating MVP you reduce the chances that you will create a product that is not needed by the consumer. You can take it as the basis of a broad methodology that influences the customer and explores the user of the product during the development process.

At first glance, MVP is a great idea, because it is addressed to the main anti-pattern in product development: creating too many features, including those not in demand, as a result, too much time is spent developing without launching a project or receiving a real feedback from the customer and users product.

Focusing on the “minimum” is actually simple. This helps to fight the tendency to create features on the principle of “do it because it's cool,” even when it’s not clear whether people want them or not.
Adding the idea of ​​the definition of "viability" balances attempts to be "minimal" by focusing on the fact that below a certain threshold the product becomes unusable. Figuring out what the customer considers "viable" may not be simple. But in theory, iteration, research and dialogue will allow you to reach an understanding.
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For some segments, this is easy. For example, in the enterprise technology business solutions are usually decided by the underlying technology, functionality, as well as sales / marketing. If you have the necessary functionality to start selling, then you have something "viable." You are “anchoring” and embarking on “swimming.”

But for many situations, just following the MVP is not enough for success.

For consumer products, applications for small and medium businesses, development tools, hardware, retail, and other segments, this indicator is not convincing. Using only a “viable” product is like visiting someone in resuscitation. He is alive, but you cannot spend a good time with him. As a result, I see more and more companies who are focused on MVP, produce products that fail when they achieve their goals.

The alternative is to focus on creating a Minimum Delightful Product (MDP) (Minimally Delightful Product) .

The idea of ​​"minimal" is almost like in MVP: we create only the most necessary. The interesting part is the creation of the product “delightful” instead of just “viable”. "Delicious" products fall in love with users. They immediately become part of the lives of users or their work. Only when the product is “delicious”, only then does it make sense. It works as you expected and brings great satisfaction. Delightful products spread faster, the word of mouth effect works and causes more satisfaction.

But the question arises, what makes a product amazing? I am sure that many people thought about this question wiser than me, but I believe that delightfulness is the result of three elementary things joined together:

• Product gestalt
• Design
• Quality

Product gestalt

Most products achieve the property of “delight” through the gestalt of the product (as the basis of the approach). (In my opinion, Alan Cooper coined this term in "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" , but I could not find the exact link)

The product gestalt defines the “soul” of the user experience. This is a combination of UX and functionality that makes the product fundamentally beautiful. Usually, gestalt is a part of a product that remains relatively constant for a long time:

• Simple search form and Google results page
• Friends list and Facebook feed
• The way in which Adobe Dreamweaver switches between HTML and editor
• SAP API Model
• The basis of application architecture and multi-touch interface on iPhone and iPad

You can achieve a great gestalt effect just by putting the right features together. This stems from the right elements, working together in such a way that the user stops thinking about technology and simply achieves his goals.

When the gestalt effect is excellent, the product is perceived as complete and useful, even if it does not have all the functionality that you would like to see in it as a user. One of the temptations in the MVP approach is to try to build a bridge only to the middle of the ravine and roll it into the light in the hope of receiving an iterative feedback. Feedback will be “this bridge sucks,” even if the idea of ​​a bridge over a gulch is brilliant in itself. Without the ability to cross the bridge “from one end to the other”, the product will simply be perceived as not working, either meaningless, or in the case of the terminology of the “bridge” - very dangerous.

Speaking of completeness, I do not mean all the features that you can imagine. "Minimality" is still critical. I'm talking about the completeness that Ken Schwaber talked about, who invented SCRUM when he spoke about “shooting a tracer bullet through a product” in the book “Agile Project Management with Scrum” .

"Tracing bullet" gives you minimal functionality to cross the chasm across the bridge - so that the product is complete and working. For example: Instead of launching Facebook with a “news feed”, but without “friends”, you make both “frending” and “news feed”, so you get a holistic User Experience, instead of working out all the features of each of the subsystems in detail .

Design

Gestalt is by far the most important component of “deliciousness”. The next component is graphic design. I deeply believe in the importance of design, but I think that it is still secondary compared to the gestalt. Graphic design does not mean an abundance of "drawing." It can be very simple, like a Google search page and display results, or rich in functionality like OS X. As humans, we always experience happiness and joy from beauty. Products that are beautiful - they are delicious.

Quality

Finally, the last element of “delight” is quality. Excellent gestalt and beautiful design lose their value when quality is sloppy. Unfortunately, too often the MVP becomes a very crappy product (very crappy product). Ironically, this comes from missing out on a very basic agile concept: when something is done, it has to be MADE. In other words, if the function is implemented, it should work without problems. The function may not include all the features that you can imagine, but what it includes should work well.

Probably the very core of the iPhone gestalt is the touch screen. When it was originally created, the original plastic screen achieved a gestalt and a design effect, so the iPhone went into production. But then, at the last minute, after testing the phone for a few weeks, Jobs decided that the plastic screen was not of high enough quality, it scratched too easily. It remained only 6 weeks before the delivery of the phone, he demanded that the team be replaced with glass, and through titanic efforts they replaced and released on time.

iPhone is one of the most successful products of consumer equipment. Imagine if the Apple team created the iPhone using MVP. Of course, they would have to put the phone with a plastic screen. What else would they have missed? Do not follow the path of the application model (the ability to create your own individual applications), but leave the hard-wired functionality of the program shell? Forced to work multi-touch, but also placed the retractable (folding) keyboard just in case? How many crappy versions would we have to endure before we got the amazing product that it became in version 1.0? (Perhaps, looking at the history of other phone manufacturers, you will understand the essence.)

Without a doubt, Apple made a bunch of tests and prototypes, but at the same time they set a very high bar for what they want to create. They did not deliver the product until they had achieved the correct gestalt effect (multi-touch screen and application platform), the design was excellent, and the quality also.

With all of this, version 1.0 has left many things behind. The battery life was short, the screen resolution could have been better, the camera's capabilities were minimal, traditional smartphone applications (contacts, mail, dialer, calendar) were no better than others, some say - worse, Blackberry was the market leader. Also, there was no real application market, there was no front camera, and so on. Does the absence of all this create a “minimal” product? I would say yes. But "minimal" does not sacrifice "delight."

Conclusion

In the world of software development, there is more freedom than in the hardware world. You can sort out and change something much easier. So software developers can skip the iPhone example. But many software products, as well as other products, such as retail stores and consumer services will develop well, focusing on the MDP, and not on the MVP.

Before you inspire and immerse yourself in the creation of a product to quickly start, take a step back and pay respect to your users. Work with the problems associated with the creation of a delightful product, at the same time, keep the functionality minimal and go to the market as soon as you solve the tasks that you faced.

Finally, keep in mind that iteration and feedback are invaluable, but creating great products will not work simply by collecting feedback and using the results of A / B testing. All this also comes with insight and skill.

Not every engineer designs great products, just as not every artist paints beautiful pictures. No amount of iterative testing will replace the genius of the inventor and the design of beautiful products that are amazing to use. So do not be afraid to pay tribute to the skill that you and your team have invested in the product, as well as the desire to give users something wonderful or, even better, magic.

Original: www.startupblender.com/product-planning/minimum-viable-product-vs-minimum-delightful-product

This article is rather superficial, but if the topic turns out to be interesting, then I will try to develop the topic in subsequent translations and articles.