prodissues

From an Idea to an MVP

Mon 18 April 2016 by yaniv

So I have this idea for food recommendation, but now I'm struggling with where to start. What will be a good first usecase for a POC or MVP.

At the moment, I'm planning on a single page dashboard where users can login to, to get a report on their food ordering habits - top dishes and restaurants and more such data.

But I have are two issues with scope:

  1. Not sure users will see the value that I see in such dashboard. Now, sure, that's what the MVP is for, but:
  2. It's not testing the real product assumption that users will want to get recommendations for food.

With that in mind, I thought of two other options:

  1. Dishes following - as a user, I can follow the food that I like and see updates, recipes and places I can find them.
  2. Group ordering - offer a simple 'negotiator' for food ordering. For example, a group of 4 people who want to order lunch, will connect to this page and put their preferences. The system will match their preferences and come with a suggested restaurant. Users can then save their preferences by registering. It reminds me of doodle.com.

I like the other option both because it requires less technical effort - I can see how I can pull out an MVP without writing a line of code. In addition, this can turn out to be a utility that users will be willing to register to. Lastly, solving for groups orders introduce the possibility for virality and network effect.