This is a presentation I gave at Hackers & Founders in Barcelona, on strategies for designing Minimum Viable Products. I focus on how designing MVPs is a core part of modern UX practice, in particular the craft of designing experiments that test a hypothesis.

1. The UX of Minimum Viable Products
by @andersramsay
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX

2. Hey, what are you working on right now?
We’re working on our MVP...
Your what?
Our Minimum Viable--Valuable?--Product,
not sure. Anyway, that’s what we’re
working on.
Cool, how do you
go about creating
a MVP?
Uh, not totally sure. We’re just sort of
trying to find a minimum feature set.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX

3. “The Hudson Bay Start”
Fur-trappers in Canada predicting what they will need to
survive for weeks or months in the Northern Territories.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX

4. MVP Design
Hypothesis:
- This is my prediction of what I’ll
need to survive for 2 months in
the middle of nowhere. UX: How do we
Experiment: design effective
- Trek into nearby woods and camp
out for a few days. experiments?
Measurement/Learning:
- Did I use more/less food than I
expected in 3 days? Did I
discover gear I needed but didn’t
have with me? etc.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX

5. MVP Design Strategies
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX

6. Painkiller
Strategy: Find the biggest pain point that can be removed with the
least amount of effort.
Great for: Enterprise systems, esp. when replacing a legacy system.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX

7. Fa$t Money
Strategy: Remove features/content the customer is not directly paying for.
Great for: Consumer products, esp. with domain-specific content/features.
Image source: http://www.creativedreamincubator.com/images/products/buynow50.jpg
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX

8. Turk It
Strategy: Manually simulate system operations.
Great for: Products with complex algorithms, back-end operations.
Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tuerkischer_schachspieler_racknitz3.jpg
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX

9. Go Ugly Early
Strategy: Build the functionality first, with just a bare-bones UI.
Great for: Products in which the selling point is a technical special sauce.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX

10. Fake it ‘til you make it (Archetypal Lean Startup landing page)
Strategy: Once a final product has been envisioned, market it as if
it’s already completed and measure market interest.
Great for: Products with a high degree of uncertainty about market interest.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX

11. MVP Design Strategies
Designing MVPs is a core part of Modern UX Practice.
Will usually be a combination of strategies.
Light-weight prototypes can be your first ‘Build’ iteration in a
build-measure-learn cycle.
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX

12. One MVP Design Pattern
Collaborative Design
X-Pairing GOOB!
Charter Studio
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX

13. Thanks!
@andersramsay
andersramsay.com
designingwithagile.com
@ANDERSRAMSAY / #AGILEUX