An MVP (Minimally viable product) has one purpose, being quick to market. It’s a simple idea, design & build the least for a working product, get it out to the world and get feedback. Get actual insights from people who might actually give you money instead of spending a bunch of time trying to build something perfect based on a bunch of assumptions, or limited user information.
How quick is ‘quick to market’ though? I have no idea, but it helps to think on timescales of days or weeks instead of months or years. It also helps to really understand what your MVP truly is. What is the line between a working product and a broken one?
With this in mind, I conceptualized, designed and developed an MVP in less than a working week. The app is not ambitious, which makes building an MVP possible for a single person.
I enjoy board games and wanted to make an app that had to do with them. I decided on my product after seeing a website called Winc, an app about wine. Winc asks you a few simple questions about your tastes and then match you with wines that fit a taste profile they create for you. They then sell you some sort of monthly wine subscription. I thought this was a cool idea and could do something similar with board games. Minus the monthly subscription part.
Luckily there’s some great Databases’ and API’s out there from BoardGameGeek, who is basically the authority on tabletop games. Essentially the app will ask you a few questions about your tastes, social life, etc… Then map those answers to different attributes of a game like category, player count, or mechanic.
Within a couple days I had some basic flows, sketches and designs done. More importantly, by throwing away a bunch of ideas and having a laser focus on the outcome: recommending a board game, I was able to get an MVP done in a matter of a few days. There was no shortage of ideas and things I wanted to try but those would have only delayed the launch and not have served the core purpose. This was made clear when I spent 2 post-launch working on a couple peripheral features. Things that, had I demanded should be part of an MVP, would have extended launch by weeks.
Instead, I put up a barely working, but working nonetheless web app. I sent it to friends and posted links on social media and got some great initial feedback. This Feedback helped me improve it almost immediately. Improvements I probably would not have thought of if I had continued to develop in a silo. Everything from spelling mistakes to improvements on how games are searched and matched to answers.
The app is very niche, and it’s not going to make me any money but it was a fun project to work on. It showed me the value of putting something unrefined out there quickly. Adding new features going forward is no different, what is the minimum this feature needs to add value? That’s the target, no more.
You can check it out at tavolaapp.herokuapp.com.
