The MVE: Minimum Viable Experiment

picture of beakers and experimental jars with the words "the minimum viable experiment" written over top

Entrepreneurs would find a lot more freedom to explore and grow their ideas if they focussed less on MVP, and more on MVE: the minimum viable experiment.

The Startup Pitch

set of clear elevators with the words "perfect your startup pitch" written overtop

In graduate school, whenever we were getting ready to attend a conference, we would all get together to practice our elevator pitches. In theory, the reason we practiced our pitch was that if by some miracle we found ourselves on an elevator with a philanthropically inclined Bill Gates we’d be ready to win him over with a […]

In an MVP, do looks matter?

Set of makeup brushes, with the words "In my MVP...do looks matter?" written over-top.

The keyword in MVP is “minimum”. But how minimum should the UI be? In an MVP, do looks matter? The TL;DR answer is : It depends. Probably not too much. But you should definitely come back to worrying about aesthetics as soon as possible.

User-centered startup = Design thinking + Lean

Design thinking + lean = user-centered startup

Two schools of thought that have risen to prominence in the startup world are Design Thinking and Lean. Both promise to help you find better product solutions, but they take you on different routes to get there. In this post I highlight both approaches and propose that if you want to run a user-centered startup you need to use both: a Design thinking + Lean combo.

3 UX tips for creating your MVP

3 UX Tips for creating your MVP

You’ve got a Big Idea and you’ve launched your start-up. You’ve read every book on Lean and you are committed to taking a experimental approach. You know the first step is to create your first Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and start honing in on your exact value-proposition. But when you start scoping out the MVP you realize it has quickly gotten out of hand. What is supposed to be a minimal, simple product has turned into a large software development project. It seems like your vision for the company is too big to fit into one prototype.

If that sounds like you, then you are facing one of the most common problems entrepreneurs must overcome. Here are three UX tips to help you create your MVP. These tips are guaranteed to help you to start thinking less like an entrepreneur, and more like a User Researcher.