Холмс, кажется, вы в России...
Startup Genome has compiled some depressing statistics: 9 out of 10 startups fail. The reasons are different: not enough money, amateurs on the team, a wrong-headed approach to developing the idea. The money factor and cadre problems are obvious enough, but the approach takes more finesse. The choice here will determine how much money and what kind of team will be needed. There is some confusion about terms, too. Some call the first version of a product MVP, others a prototype or MVP prototype . Here we are going to clear up this messy business, explain the difference between MVP and prototypes, what kinds of prototypes exist and the purpose of MVP development for startups.
Reading time: 10 minutes
Looking for a development team?
We can help with design and development of apps for businesses and startups
A prototype is an interactive model of a future product, a draft that leaves space for detailed design and functionality. It is a demo to showcase the project’s potential before investors or a testing focus group.
The purposes of prototyping are to:
At Purrweb we put effort into prototyping when we expect the project to be unusually technically challenging. A prototype lets us try out suggested features and know if they can be made to work in principle, say, an offline chat room for a dating app or complicated streaming service mechanics. In a recent desktop app the challenge was to let users work with 3D jaw models, and we definitely wanted a prototype to make sure that this core function would work on our software stack hassle-free.
Prototypes are not going to be sold, they are in-house trial versions, so naturally they are rarely furnished with complete design and functionality. Let us consider the different varieties of prototypes and their advantages and disadvantages.
A graphical prototype is a sketch of the application’s looks. Designers sometimes call these plain approximations wireframes, and they are useful to give some shape to the idea and a basic outline to the product. They are not going to impress investors, but the team itself will get a notion of what it is about to start making and in which direction to advance. Wireframes can also model future users’ interaction with a website and the degree of its convenience. For instance, if you plan to create a service through which painters would be able to sell their work, a design sketch will help distribute menus, galleries and so on around the page.
🤩
😰
Depending on the complexity of the project, wireframes take 10-30 hours to put together.
An interactive prototype is fully designed, polished and detailed. It may look, click and, to the user, feel completely like the final product. The only snag is that it is a dud. There is no code. The prototype can be leveraged as the interface of an MVP later on.
Our old choice of software for interactive prototyping was Marvel. That program allows the whole team to access the project, quickly give and receive feedback and make corrections in the design. Unfortunately, it turned out that Marvel considerably lowered image quality, so we switched to Figma, an equally useful solution without this flaw.
Technical prototypes are a step up from interactives, upgrading an almost complete visual design with a portion of real functionality. This sort of prototype is needed when the whole project or a part of it is bound to be technically challenging, and it helps find out how feasible those elements are and what to change before advancing to MVP. If the technical aspects have been reined in and work as planned, the prototype is complete and ready for presenting to investors, and the team can move on to MVP.
Gives an idea not only of the concept but of how it will work.
As you can see, prototypes and MVP are complimentary stages of product development, not alternatives. A startup needs both, if it wants to succeed. MVP is our next subject.
An interactive prototype conveys an idea of how the application will work to the people who get to play around with it. Putting out an MVP is the most economic and safe way to find out the degree of demand the product will encounter from actual end users. If the developers missed the mark on function or looks, they can steer the product in the right direction at this relatively early stage.
The purpose of an MVP is to get feedback from end users and make adjustments to the technologies, the business model or any other unlikeable aspect at the testing stage.
Putting out such a trial version makes sense for startupers for several reasons:
The main advantage MVP have over prototypes is that they provide instant feedback from the target audience. Users get to try and test the product and give it an initial overall rating. An MVP brings only a minimum of functions, so the developer does not have to invest heavily into it, but it does gather a maximum of information about demand on the market and the target audience’s reactions. As for selecting which key features are to be included in such a trial, there are two schools of thought: User Story Mapping and MoSCoW. They differ a little in the details, but both approaches serve to highlight the features an MVP cannot do without. We have discussed these methods in another article. ⬇️
MVP development is less expensive than the whole thing, because ineffective features can be dropped, the strategy and project plan — corrected. It is a very important point for startups, because they can gauge how the market responds to the promise and whether the concept merits bringing in additional resources to develop the functions to the full.
MVP is the first combat-ready version of a program, with all of the tools for the product to be comfortably used, a sort of foothold to test the response of the target audience and develop the project further.
An MVP must, of course, be a match for the scale and direction of your startup, so there are several types out there you can choose from. Here are the most common varieties and some details about them, with a few cases from our experience.
1. Landing page. A landing page is not exactly a product, but it can introduce potential clients to the startup and get them interested in buying; test the pricing model; check visitors’ spending ability and their interest overall.
2. Concierge. With this kind of hypothesis testing you do all of the operations personally to get the most feedback possible. MVP app development is not even required. You offer a service to a customer and take care of providing it; if there is demand, this process can be automated.
3. Wizard of Oz. Manual-mode like the method above, but through an interface of a website or application. This way you can quickly see if people are curious about the project and find it convenient. We suggested this kind of MVP for Cheflocal, a freelancer chef project. Before they came to us, all of the orders were processed by the staff over WhatsApp.
4. Frankenstein. Another MVP with an “imitation” of work, but with only a little manual handling; under the hood the operations are routed outside to be taken care of by other services. We chose this mode of testing for Grecha.pro, a chatroom service where restaurants’ owners would be able to link up with suppliers. Half of the business processes were sent out to be handled by the Integromat service. Purrweb’s programmers wrote up the other half of the code.
5. Single Feature. As the name says, the trial features one, most interesting and important function that works. This suffices to pique the interest of clients and investors.
Your startup may be better suited for some types than others. We discuss in greater detail here the different kinds of MVP and choosing between them.
Purrweb has encountered most often three types: Single Feature, Frankenstein and Wizard of Oz. They are the most effective at swabbing up users’ logic and their interaction with the product. Landing pages are limited in this regard, so they are not used as MVP so often. The types may be mixed, too, for better testing. Here are a couple of business cases.
Headcount payment system
Headcount is a global contractor payment system. The company came to us when the deadlines were already getting tight, and we had to get the service up and running in two months. The customer wanted to present the service at Y Combinator, for which the product had to be capable of something – as much as possible. We directly went for a no-prototype MVP of the Single Feature type. The feature that mattered was transfers, but this was not possible without service account creation and connecting bank accounts to those, so a single feature dragged a few others behind it. Focusing on the main functions, we were able to deliver the product on time and without exceeding the budget.
Powerbank renting service EnerGO
The concept behind EnerGO was to let users rent powerbanks for smartphone charging at one subway station and drop them off at another. It was our first Internet of Things project with communication between devices. The testing for the MVP was done using a Chinese-made device in our office, and we again chose Single Feature as a clearly workable demonstration method. When the service got up and running, we added a few more functions and a few months later uploaded a new version of the application. By now the startup has become successful, self-sufficient and developing.
Even though prototypes and MVP serve different purposes, some people still confuse them and think they must choose one or the other. Now that we know that these forms of demonstrating a product are different, let’s finalize the differences by 3 criteria: purpose, address and monetization.
The main differences between prototypes and MVP are in:
For your convenience we’ve summarized a brief comparison of two approaches:
Prototype
MVP
If the developer has enough resources and knows just what the market and the target audience will want, it makes sense to make a startup MVP without a prototype. We at Purrweb recommend making prototypes, though, because they give the company a chance to be flabbergasted by its product’s shortcomings rather than flabbergasting others. The damage control overhead will be lower and the MVP that results more competitive.
MVP and prototypes are different stages of development, their purposes are not the same, but startups whose resources are limited sometimes combine them. Whether to make both or just one, or one that is both, is going to depend on the company’s particular situation.
Ask Purrweb about yours, if you have doubts about prototyping or MVPing. We are a complete-lifecycle company, and we specialize in MVP development with an emphasis on end-user convenience. We can suggest the most appropriate model for you and make the plan a reality on short notice.
How useful was this post?
Rate this article!
21 ratings, аverage 4.8 out of 5.
No votes so far! Be the first to rate this post.
As you found this post useful...
Follow us on social media!
Read more
Thanks for your inquiry. It usually take up to 24 hours to get back with reply.
Wanna schedule an online meeting?
Sorry, something went wrong with your request.
Please, try again later.