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INDUSTRY INSIGHT

Standing up a New Brand & MVP

The simultaneous dance of conception, and idea validation through design

A quick way of thinking of the MVP is it provides enough features to attract early adopters and validate proof of concept early in the product development process. In software for instances, an MVP may have a goal of gaining real user feedback to utilize for iterations and product improvement. Visions are often supported by many conversations, it starts with a spark, and it can turn into a flame fast once the excitement kicks in. Once the ones you respect most have validated your vision, the earliest form of proof-of-concept has been achieved.

The leap of faith is near.

Executing on a vision is the leap of faith beyond the obvious. Like any entrepreneurial gamble, you go all in on a gut instinct. Putting a plan into motion definitely starts to make things feel real. There is a lot of moving parts when it comes to simultaneously standing up a brand and MVP. It can be a nail biting experience in between vision and idea validation, but I am here to tell you, many steps of confirmation do take place if the process is run true, and steps are not skipped. Improper budgeting is the key reason steps get skipped, and product launches fall short.

As far as all the moving parts mentioned above, they are broken into important steps, which include idea validation, product planning, brand development, UX development and prototyping, UI design, coding, marketing, and sales activities. This is all followed with beta testing and refinement, as the cycles of innovation step in.

This bullet list above sounds great and all, but how do you really develop a purpose-driven brand and a product simultaneously?

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"The way to get started is to quit
talking and begin doing."

Walt Disney

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You start with Product Planning – it’s important to have a product plan in place and a helpful guide to follow. It keeps the whole process holistically clear and systematic, and provides a higher-level view. The balcony view of the dance floor I have referred to in other articles. This view ensures that everything is consistent, particularly the design approach. For instance, we lean heavily towards a custom twist of the Material UI design components, but there are several contenders to consider.

Now enter the Brand & Product development process – Which consists of two very similar processes that run parallel and overlap, and eventually coming together harmonistically into the high fidelity product design.

The secret ingredient to the process overlap is that the UX design is broken into two main parts, low-fidelity and high fidelity. Low fidelity design is a mission of higher functionality, and content. It’s not pretty, and that’s not the intention. The sole purpose is to cover all bases of planning. While high fidelity design focuses on bringing the plan to life with systematic branding elements such as design components, colors, typography and more. The icing on the cake that’s intended to make everyone’s jaw drop at the party. Yes, launch is the party.

Low fidelity design is much more time consuming than the high fidelity phase. By breaking the process down into two main buckets, we’re able to separate the tasks and run a branding exercise parallel to our UX research and development phase. This allows us to hyper focus on key brand elements in an isolated environment, and to efficiently think through the brand perception at a higher level with a larger window of time.

These aligned processes ultimately put an end to the monster excuse of “I can’t start anything until I have a name or logo’” I can’t tell you how many times I have heard these excuses over my career, and some portions may be correct from a branding perspective. But the truth is, those excuses are roadblocks, and there is so much work to do.

This process breakdown essentially allows us to play brand dress up like they do in the movies; shopping Rodeo Drive care free, drinking wine, and flirting with the help. Similarly trying on all these fancy colors, type faces, logo variations, and more, while thinking nothing of cost.

I joke, but this is a systematic approach, and what that provides besides consistency, is flexibility without compromising the timeline. This methodology streamlines the process, provides time to high leverage branding decisions, all while never compromising on time or final product. It also allows us to isolate the brand development, and get to the heart of the mission.

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The heart of the mission is to create a purposeful brand experience that conveys the contagious passion of the founder to the world through their lens. It also must speak to the desired target audience through brand perception. Once that has been achieved, the brand elements and story are integrated into the high fidelity design. This is where brand experience and user experience marry, and work together to engage and delight the users.

Sounds so peachy, right? In all honesty, it’s a beautiful experience, because this is when all the hard work comes together to solidify what has been a long time vision. It provides a healthy round of validation, and a huge boost in confidence towards the MVP goals. This is the birth of a product-child, which will need great attention as it grows.

As we move into finalizing the high fidelity design, and move the project into the development phase, we use this as an opportunity to fine-tune the details. We work with the content team to polish the copy, we bring in our SEO partners, and we start to formulate a social strategy. Process flexibility is a beautiful thing, without structure, the process wouldn’t be possible.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a noise? Same thing could be said for a product launch. If nobody knows about it, did it ever really happen? Designing, building, and launching a product are not enough. A marketing strategy must be ready to roll for the product to ever gain traction towards the goal of market share.

Product Design Challenges – When designing for a startup, a whole new set of design challenges arise. A fresh perspective has to be taken with design and content strategy when the tried and true common formulas of marketing are no longer relevant. Design scenarios are different, so the approach needs to be different. Lets talk about the design approach for an MVP, for they hold a whole set of challenges you wouldn’t suspect at first site. Here is a quick example of some of them I have run into in the past.

When designing for a digital medical service platform, the team section lacked the wow factor. You see, creating a team section on a website is easy if you have a robust team of professionals. But how do you sell a team of 3 people on the same scale as the team of 30? Not a big deal in many scenarios, but offering a 24-7 Telehealth Service with a 3-person team simply did not add up, and it was painfully obvious to outside eyes if designed inefficiently. We needed to give off the perception of a big team.

This same thing could be said for an about us section. How do you shape this portion of the storytelling if the business was only a conversation 48 hours ago? The history just doesn’t exist, and perception is definitely something you don’t want to fall short on at launch, even a soft launch. Also, be mindful of a beautiful design that doesn’t necessarily fit the tool of where it currently is today, more of where you hope it to be tomorrow. This seems like an obvious statement, but think of it as a Ferrari, that drives like a minivan. That’s a guaranteed let down at test drive, and chances of a return visit are slim to none.

With an MVP, you can be flawed, you can be human, you can be visibly restricted by budget, but what you can’t be short on is the core offering. If the core tool is a homerun, or even a double, everything else can be brought up-to-speed. If the design outweighs the tool, the Ferrari minivan let down is right around the corner.

Here is another example, when designing a web footer for a larger business it’s rather easy to give off the professional perception desired due to the abundance of resources at hand; think of Coke’s footer for instance. But how would you create the same perception for a startup that simply doesn’t have the same resources? They still need a footer that fits the bill.

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Let's talk product launch – The term product launch is tossed around often; you’ve all heard it. Like the digital form of ‘All Natural’ or ‘Organic’. But what does it really mean? A product launch is referring to getting said vision to market; in its most minimal form. Lean and mean, with a primary focus on the core offering, the sole purpose of product conception. Here’s a little more clarity.

Soft Launch, not to be confused with an MVP Launch This is a segmented approach, and is referring to releasing the product to a limited market, or test segment of the target audience. The main purpose of this approach is to reduce risks commonly connected with a product release. This test segment is often referred to as the early adopters, and they offer the insight and data to product improvement. These early adopters create the data needed for proof of concept and idea validation. The key takeaways are customer feedback, a better understanding of the willingness to pay, as well as testing monetization options.

Founders often get soft launches confused with an MVP. Here’s a good way of looking at it, a soft launch is about learning the market conditions to launch the product, and it could be a limited niche or specific audience. An MVP launch is about launching the first iteration of the product.

Either or will provide the ammunition needed to garner interest in funding. Hard Launch – this is an all in approach. With a loaded marketing budget, and ad campaigns to support it. This should only be applicable to mature products that have proven themselves in smaller markets and are ready to roar.

Dark Launch – this is based on the methodology of continuous delivery, to simply put it, it’s the regular feature updates of your minimum viable product. Why is it called dark? It’s because it allows the release of new features to a small amount of blind users. For instance, if you implement a change to the checkout user flow, you can test it on a small set of users first. The key word is test, you don’t want to spook the crowd.

Enter the Post Launch Data Mission – Once the product launches it provides an opportunity to breath for a moment. But this is not the time for a set-it-and-forget approach. This is the time to observe and collect data to ultimately learn and improve the product.

From this point on the cycles of innovation kick in, and you’d be surprised at what the data can tell you. Whenever we launch a new product, there is always a running list of things to improve upon from the opening gates. The trick though is to analyze the data and innovate where the demand is the highest. You may have had your heart set on adding a cool new feature, but if the on boarding process needs adjustments because of a surprisingly high drop-off rate, that will take the highest priority. Only data can give you this sort of intelligence, and the beauty of it is, data never lies.

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When all is said and done, much of UX can define branding in my perspective. Design solutions need to be solved in context to the business challenge, not in a predetermined style guide. In my opinion, the UX experience shapes the brand experience. When the high fidelity design nears completion, this is when a true style guide can be built-out. One that reaches far beyond the basics and components, and that fits and solves the business challenges at market.

Designers are heavily influenced by what they see in the world around them. Repeating is easy, but creating something out of nothing is where the great designers set themselves apart.

For this is the whole purpose of our industry, to solve business challenges with creativity not repetition.