Evolving Your Idea Until It Matters

Back in the days of dial-up internet, iteration was difficult. By iteration I mean updates, changes and improvements to products; in a sense, evolution. When you iterate an app you bring out a new version with new or refined features, big or small. These days, thanks to the internet becoming faster and cheaper, you can evolve your app very quickly based on near real-time feedback from your users.

If you have an app idea you’ve probably thought about it a lot and in doing so, you’ve probably added more features to it than you actually need. Often people think of an idea that solves a problem but then keep thinking of other problems the app could solve. An app that solves many problems isn’t a bad thing but for an app that doesn’t even exist yet, it could spell disaster before you’ve even started.

Your very first step in building your app is to make it as lean as possible. That means you build an app that solves one problem and get it to your users. This is your minimum viable product (MVP), an app that solves the problem simply and quickly.

Use this MVP to measure user feedback. If they respond well to the app, expand the core set of features. If they don’t, pivot. Pivoting requires stepping back and evaluating the problem you’re trying to solve and the the problem the user wants solved. Once think you’ve aligned the two, build or refine the feature set to solve that problem.

Twitter, GroupOn and Instagram all started as one thing and evolved into completely different apps aiming at solving completely different problems. What happened was that the founders misunderstood the problem they were trying to solve and evolved their idea until it worked. Even Facebook started lean and mean until it evolved based on customer feedback.

Twitter was a podcasting company until the release of iTunes foiled their business plan and the founders pivoted. GroupOn was a social media site intended to get people to band together to accomplish a particular goal until the founders pivoted. Instagram started as a location based check-in app until its founders pivoted.

All of these apps started out trying to solve a problem they thought people wanted solved. Instead, people started using these apps to solve other problems all together and the founders jumped at solving it.

So if you have an app idea that solves a problem, solve that problem and see how your users react. Don’t build a myriad of other features that you think will help solve the problem. Build your minimum viable product and gauge user reaction. Enhance the features that are used and disregard the ones that aren’t.

The concept is iteration. Build something and test user reaction to it. If they like it, keep going. If not, step back, evaluate and then pivot. Evolve your idea until it matters to the user.