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Lesson 01 – Defining the Minimum Viable Product

Every ambitious product starts with big ideas—but effective innovation begins by narrowing your focus. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to pinpoint real user pain, translate that into essential features, and build a lightweight prototype designed for fast feedback and iteration.

1. Start With Real Problems

Before building anything, anchor your work in user reality. Your product should solve a problem that’s both important and frequent. To uncover these pain points:

  • Conduct user interviews Explore frustrations, workflows, and workarounds through open-ended conversations.
  • Run surveys or polls Capture broader patterns and validate which issues are most widespread.
  • Review analytics or support tickets Identify where users drop off, get stuck, or ask for help.
  • Analyze competitors Study what rival products offer—and more importantly, where they fall short.

🎯 Outcome: A prioritized list of real, validated user problems, ranked by severity and frequency.

2. Translate Problems Into Minimum Features

Now turn your pain point list into a focused feature set that solves the core job—nothing more.

Think of your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) as a test: Can this version prove your idea solves the most critical user problem?

How to scope features:

  • Solve one job well – Don’t try to please every use case. Aim for clarity over completeness.
  • Minimize complexity – Reduce steps, screens, and setup.
  • Mock or fake the hard parts – Simulate back-end logic or integrations if they aren’t central to the test.
  • Defer nice-to-haves – Any feature not tied to a top-ranked pain point is a distraction.

✅ Ask yourself: If this feature didn’t exist, would the core user benefit still hold up?

✅ Explore more MVP scope examples in solutions/mvp_scope_examples.md

3. Build a Lightweight Prototype

With a crisp feature set, the next step is to visualize and validate the experience—before investing in code.

Prototype in stages:

  1. Sketch user flows – Outline how users will interact with your solution, focusing on critical moments.
  2. Create a clickable mockup – Use design tools (like Figma or slides) to simulate interactions.
  3. Build a bare-bones prototype – Code only what’s needed to test the core workflow.
  4. Test with users – Watch them use the prototype. Capture where they hesitate, get confused, or succeed.
flowchart LR
    A(User Pain Points) --> B(Minimum Feature List)
    B --> C(Prototype Build)
    C --> D(User Feedback)
    D --> B

🔁 This loop is the foundation of iterative development: define → prototype → test → refine.

đŸŽ„ Screencast

Watch a real-world example of MVP scoping and early feedback in action: đŸ“ș Capstone Demo Day Video

What’s Next

Once your MVP works in principle, it’s time to bring it to market. In the next lesson, you’ll learn how to craft a focused go‑to‑market strategy to test your concept in the wild.