Don't Serve Burnt Pizza (And Other Lessons in Building Minimum Lovable Products)

A common focus of developers when building products is this affixation with trying to cram every possible feature into the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Often, this is a reflection of the developer’s obsession with trying to solve all of the user’s problems so that the MVP launch would make a big splash.

This article, however, emphasises the need to perform proper user research before diving straight into developing a MVP. Rather, focus on building a Minimum Lovable Product (MLP) which addresses the core of user needs before anything else. Instead of focusing on making the MVP launch a big splash, focus on having it address the right concerns of the target users. In doing so, the product is able to remain oriented towards the core users and their concerns - rather than becoming an amalgamation of features mishmashed together around hypothetical concerns and problems.

The article also covers ways that one can perform proper user research and I highly recommend it to any developer who might be struggling with trying to cram many features their first release.