Minimum Desirable Product

Minimum Desirable Product
Customer Development for the“Winner Take All” Consumer Web

My target audience
Mass market consumer internet startups
Daily usage, but low value interactions
Ad-supported, indirect monetization models
First to 100M uniques/month wins

Executing the “Viability-First” strategy
Get a lot of users through viral channels
Create a Minimum Viable Product
Maximize user acquisition and revenue/user
Iterate to a great product experience (?)
Can this ever lead to a high engagement product with sustainable viral growth?

Scenarios that made me think
High-growth social network that’s profitable but has terrible user retention
Dating site with lots of subscribers, but no one can find the dates they were promised
Photo-sharing site with 100M+ uniques/month organic growth, but unprofitable

Am I testing the right thing with a Minimum Viable Product?

A different approach:Minimum Desirable Product

IDEO design “lenses”

Test the riskiest thing first
Depending on your business:
Minimum Viable Product
Distribution, Revenue, Business model
Minimum Feasible Product
Transistors/inch, Power usage, Cures cancer
Minimum Desirable Product
Engagement, Sustainable growth, Love <3

Desirable but not viable (for years!)

The “Desirability-First” strategy
Understand user goals
Create a Minimum Desirable Product
Listen to users and maximize Love <3
Iterate to a great product experience
It still needs to be viable and feasible, so filter your ideas through that!

How to build an MDP
Understand the target user and their goals
Identify 2-3 core scenarios
Make it 1-4 main pages
Tech demo in <2 weeks, MDP in 4-6 weeks
Are you using it every day?
Will 10 people to use it every day? 100?

If you get stuck,add more features right?(Or, once you have an MDP,add more features right?)

Min versus Max Desirability
Maximum desirability != More features
They probably have less features
Focus on the “right” scenarios
Compelling and refined consumer value
Boiling down the minimal featureset takes more time, not less! (Good design is hard)

“In many ways, it's the things that are not there that we are most proud of” –JonyIve on the iPad

examples and resources

The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper
The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelly
Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge
Artful Making by Robert Austin / Devin Lee
The Design of Business by Roger Martin
Human Centered Design Toolkit by IDEOhttp://bit.ly/8hyn2r

Andrew Chen
http://andrewchenblog.com
voodoo@gmail.com

http://andrewchenblog.com	5243
http://www.pluggd.in	207
http://fbindie.posterous.com	152
http://www.manualdastartup.com.br	107
http://www.slideshare.net	45
http://madebymany.com	25
http://rayfil.com	9
http://feeds.feedburner.com	9
http://www.alanodea.com	7
http://static.slidesharecdn.com	7
http://www.npost.com	6
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	6
https://pramati.qontext.com	5
http://65.55.177.205	4
http://house.hotstudiodev.com	3
http://www.netvibes.com	3
http://paper.li	2
http://feedproxy.google.com	2
http://dump.fittl.com	2
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	2
http://lean-product-development.posterous.com	2
http://educa2011.uct.cl	1
http://dashboard.bloglines.com	1
http://www.actionhubs.com	1
http://andrewchen.typepad.com	1
http://readwarp.com	1
http://posterous.com	1
http://drizzlin.com	1
http://reemer.posterous.com	1

Minimum Desirable Product

by Andrew Chen on Apr 07, 2010

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

29 Embeds 5,856

Statistics

Minimum Desirable Product — Presentation Transcript