How much should i design? How much should i measure / analyse? Good questions…this article delves into the former and my post the latter. The gist of this article is that a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) , can be broken into 2; Minimum Viable Features and Minimum Viable design. You need to do as much as is necessary to validate your assumptions – phil   

One of the top questions I get when helping entrepreneurs, especially those who have not achieved product/market fit, is “How much should I invest into the design of my… landing page,  MVP,  smoke-test, pitch deck,… etc.”  The commonly cited answer is that “it depends.” But it depends on WHAT?

The dilemma

Calculating the right level of form in relation to function is one of the longest running debates across all the disciplines of design.  In simple terms, it’s deciding the balance between the utility a product provides (function) and the beauty of it (form).  As the classic example below taken from the Universal Principles of Design book shows, focusing heavily on one area greatly impacts the end result.

via The Design Dilema for Lean Startups.

I’m working into the mine field of analytics for Flashissue. We’re 2 months into a product launch and following a lot of that “lean start-up” thinking.

Big dilema = what’s the balance between using analytics and metrics versus using gut feel.

(To put the discussion in context, the product is a content curation tool that let’s small businesses quickly create email newsletters and social media campaigns i.e. a fairly high volume of users trying the product who i’ll want to convert to paid customers)

Yes, we should now be in that feedback-iterate feedback-iterate loop (we are) and in order to do this well we need to be able to measure measure measure, right?

This comes at a cost though…how much management / dev resource do i throw at it all versus using my gut about whether things are working or not.

Here’s where i’m at, so i’m interested to know your thoughts if you’ve been in a similar postion:

Reports:

• Cohort reports (to show how i’m retaining and engaging users)
• Funnel reports (to show how well i’m acquiring users)
• Live reports (to show when and what users are doing)

Implementation:

I’m reviewing these products. They all have plus and minus points and i’m up to my eyeballs in blog reviews

• Kissmetrics / Mixpanel / Google Analytics (for the reports) – not easy to implement and use (plus the former 2 = $$$$)
• intercom.io/ for in-product messaging and engagement
• Uservoice for feedback/support

To be honest, i could channel the entire dev team at creating / managing these analytics for a month and still have more to do.

My entrepreneurial side says:

“screw all this, you’ll know whether your product is taking off or not, use your gut and experience and save yourself the heart ache and frustration of pulling the guys off building the product”.

… And the internal debate rages on about using analytics and metrics versus gut feel.