What is Lean UX Design Process and how to create MVP for startup products?
The process of design is the secret weapon to succeed a product. Designers around the world use various strategies to design the first version of the product. However, Lean UX is the revolutionary UX design process and cost-saving activity for the startup. In the following section, I will provide an overview of the Lean UX process and How to create an MVP for a startup.
Lean UX process
The process of Lean UX is iterative, and it consists of four steps: Declare Assumption, Create MVP, Run an Experiment, and Receive Feedback & Research (Gothelf, 2013, p.15 -189). The process of Lean UX is illustrated in the following figure. Lean UX radically transforms the way we work; it starts with the assumptions instead of requirements and tests the hypothesis to measure the desired outcomes. (Gothelf, 2013)
1. Declare Assumption
The first step of the Lean UX is to declare the assumptions which consist of Vision, Framing, and Outcome. The assumption includes the problem statement, assumption periodization, hypothesis, outcomes, persona, and features of the primary products.
2. Create an MVP
It helps to test the assumption. MVP is typically a prototype (such as paper sketches, clickable wireframes). For creating an MVP, Lean UX suggested a collaborative design that allows us to build a product concept together and solve the design problem through a shared understanding.
3. Run an Experiment
The key concept of these steps is to run an MVP experiment to figure out the market possibilities and what people want, not just what they say.
4. Feedback and Research
Collecting feedback and analysis of it are the finishing steps of the Lean UX cycle. The result of the experiment addresses to inform the team whether the hypothesis regarding an assumption is correct or not. In the next iteration, the team refactor the assumption and run the experiment for further improvement, which is known as pivoting.
Minimum viable products (MVP)
MVP is an idea for developing a product in a start-up setting with a limited number of features that reduce the risk for investors and targets to succeed in the open market (Interaction Design Foundation 2019, 15 March). Moreover, MVP is a prototype in the early product version to test the concept. An MVP is the smallest version of the product that enables a Build-Learn-Measure (MBL) feedback loop, this version of the product is developed with a minimum amount of effort (Ries, 2011). To validate the initial hypothesis MVP is the smallest deed that helps us to learn (Gothelf, 2013). According to Grama (2016), MVP is a product that contains a minimum number of features designed to validate and learn about the product and its iterative development process. In terms of Lean UX, an MVP is a prototype that is made of paper sketches or a clickable wireframe to collect relevant data to answer a given hypothesis. Therefore, MVP can be considered as e-mail, interview, button to nowhere. In other words, MVP could be a short animation with an explanation of what does the product do, and why a user should buy it (Ries, 2011). Nguyen-Duc et al. (2017) asserted that it could be a user interface that provides the feeling of the actual product.
Creating MVP
There are several ways to create an MVP. Lean UX suggests using the collaborative design process, which includes problem identification, individual idea generation, presentation, iteration, and team idea generation. A minimum viable user experience (MVUX) framework is represented by Hokkanen (2016) to support early product development in startups. The framework is presented in Figure 5. The main elements of the framework are Attractiveness, Approachability, Professionalism, and Selling the Idea. “Selling the Idea” is the aim of the framework which offers startups a possibility of receiving feedback from the target population. Besides, the other three elements (attractiveness, approachability, professionalism) build a foundation to encourage people to start using the product. (Hokkanen, 2016)
Gothelf advocated to build MVP without code and suggested a few MVP prototype methods and tools which include paper-based low-fidelity prototypes, low-fidelity prototypes (Clickable wireframe), mid and high-fidelity prototypes, and hand-coded live data prototypes. Furthermore, in order to create a low fidelity prototype the there are various tools such as Balsamiq, Microsoft Visio, OmniGraffle (Mac only, Microsoft PowerPoint, Fluid Designer/Pop Prototype on Paper. (Gothelf, 2013).
Reference
Rahman, N. I & Rajanen (2019). Early phase of user involvement to validate the minimum viable product: An approach of Lean UX. University of Oulu
Gothelf, J. (2013). Lean UX: Applying lean principles to improve user experience. O’Reilly Media, Inc
Hokkanen, L., Kuusinen, K., & Väänänen, K. (2016). Minimum viable user experience: A framework for supporting product design in startups. In International Conference on Agile Software Development (pp. 66–78). Springer, Cham.
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