Understanding minimum viable products (MVP) in UX design: A quickstart guide

Creating a minimum viable product (MVP) in UX design is the process and outcome of creating the first and quickest-to-build version of a usable product. The goal is to allow user access as fast as possible, so product teams can gather feedback and iterate quickly—before investing the full time and budget needed to develop the product with a full feature set.

In this article, we’ll explore the reasons to build an MVP, how UX research plays a role in the process, and offer a quickstart guide to designing your own MVP’s UX.

The minimum viable product, or MVP, is the simplest version of a product that UX teams can ship and test with users. It helps validate the core concept of the product, and review its user flows and overall UX design, allowing product teams to build and iterate quickly.

Don’t be fooled, an MVP is not a prototype or an incomplete solution—it’s a functional product, but with a reduced set of features.

A key element of lean UX and agile development frameworks, including MVPs in the UX design process has a number of perks; allowing you to:

An ongoing debate in the product world is whether a minimum viable product is an outcome (the product itself) or a process (of discovering and building the MVP). The simple answer is: it’s both.

An MVP looks like a working product with reduced functionality. We often see new apps or programs launch with early access or limited feature sets—this is typically the MVP.

The MVP process is an iterative design process to build and ship a functional product that fulfills its core purpose, within a reduced time and budget.

Bansi Mehta, CEO and Founder of Koru UX Design, says, “The MVP process can be defined as the process of building the most basic version of a product that delivers value to the user and, as a bonus, captures some of the value back.”

The duration and level of detail put into building an MVP will depend on resources like budget and time available. But the key element of any MVP is simplicity and speed—what can you build quickly that is functional and offers value?

Read on for our seven steps to create an MVP—from problem discovery to design iteration.

Analyze user data, review customer feedback, and conduct research to identify a clear problem.

For example, let’s say your product is an invoicing tool and your users keep requesting the ability to connect invoices to a tax calculator. This suggests an initial problem: users find moving data from one app to another overly time-consuming.

You consider solutions like:

As well as defining the problem and ideating a solution, you also need to set objectives. The objectives refer to how you’ll measure the success of your solution. For example:

All within two months of launch.

Once you've defined the problem and goals, conduct market and user research to assess your solution’s viability early on. This allows you to avoid wasting resources on ideas that aren’t adequate solutions to your target users’ needs.

Here are five UX research methods that will help you test your MVP’s viability:

Key questions to answer during your user research include:

This is all crucial information to collect before designing the MVP, so you can build solutions that make sense to your specific user.

The next step is the value proposition—the elevator pitch explaining what the product offers and how it benefits users.

To write this, analyze the initial problem statement and business objectives and consider the insights collected from researching your target audience.

Here’s an example of a value proposition for the tax calculator add-on:

This tax calculator will further support existing users of the product by helping them stay compliant and easily pay taxes from within the platform. It’s approved and developed by experts.

With your researched solution and established value proposition, you can start defining the must-have features for your MVP.

Revisit your problem statement, user research, and value proposition to identify essential features. List all the potential features you envision for your end product and prioritize them based on their importance and feasibility.

For the tax calculator add-on, key features might include:

However, you can't build all of these for an MVP.

“Instead of following the laborious method of covering all the features, focus on creating an MVP with the must-haves,” says Bansi.

Focus on necessities, like a tax calculator and basic FAQs which address the problem of helping users stay compliant and calculate taxes. You can build less critical features like an accountant directory in future iterations.

Mapping the user journey is crucial to understanding when users will discover your product or feature, and how they might interact with it. This helps design intuitive flows that guide users to your features at the right time.

Following our example—you map the user journey and notice that after sending an invoice, users often open a spreadsheet to record the invoice number, supplier, and amount. They then continue with other tasks.

This insight suggests you can add a pop-up on the invoice page to announce the new feature. The user path would then look like be:

Once the path is defined, make those ideas come to life in a low-fidelity wireframe of your solution’s layout and structure. This allows you to conduct a first round of usability testing, before investing time in designing the more developed prototypes.

After conducting wireframe testing, you can turn your paper wireframes into a clickable Figma prototype with some basic copy. Test your prototypes with real potential users to identify any usability issues.

Types of prototype testing you can try include:

Use these findings to create an actionable UX research report that your design team can use to work user feedback into the prototype.

While you should conduct tests before developing the MVP, it’s crucial that you see testing as an iterative process. Ongoing research throughout the MVP process allows you to refine solutions, enhance user experience, and maintain a competitive edge.

Work with the development team to build the MVP’s UI design. Bear in mind that while MVPs may be a bit clunky, you can conduct internal quality assurance during the product development process to ensure the platform is free of any major bugs.

Once the essentials are in place, release the app to users for feedback. Start with a soft launch to a small group; collect feedback, monitor success metrics, and collaborate with product owners on the next steps.

While analyzing feedback, stay on top of your success metrics and work with product owners to define the next steps.

It’s important to remember that an MVP is a process, so leverage continuous product discovery to iterate and improve your product as you grow.

Finally, don’t forget to look back on your initial objectives to measure success. Has launching your MVP helped reach the goals you set? Reflect back to determine the success of your project, and identify room for improvement going forward.

Research and user testing are a crucial part of the MVP process, so finding a UX research tool that enables you to quickly and easily get user feedback is a must.

Maze is a user research platform with a comprehensive suite of user research methods to take your MVP from problem to product. Whether it’s Prototype Testing, Interview Studies, Usability Testing, or any other technique, Maze helps organizations uncover user insights at the speed of product development.

Plus, research participants are never more than a click or two away—the Maze Panel offers instant access to millions of pre-vetted, ready-to-go testers for your user research initiatives. Filter participants per your needs, and get started in minutes.

MVP development is the first step towards something great—whether that’s a new product or improving an existing one. Take your first step with Maze.