Batteries Not Included: Turning a Minimum Viable Product to a Minimum Lovable Product
“The cost of mediocrity is disappointment.” — William Arthur Ward
The excitement was palpable. Did I get it? Or would it be a disappointing Christmas? The snow outside was deep. The windows were frosted over. The wood-burning stove was roaring. A beautiful scene, yet all I could think of was that toy. Like the movie A Christmas Story and Ralphie’s quest for a bb gun, I had dropped as many hints as possible — although my ask was less dangerous.
As a child of the 80s, I feel my choice of epic toys grew each Christmas. With the deregulation of advertising (apparently a thing in the 80s), toy manufacturers had a new way to reach into our homes, leading to hot, high demand and sold-out toys every Christmas. Thoughts started racing around my head. Would I be a victim of a toy shortage? Would I get something I didn’t ask for instead? Did my parents find it, or did they give up?
No. No. No. I had pester power. The ability to nag and nag until my parents caved. My confidence returned. It must be here. Yet as I opened gift after gift, my enthusiasm waned until I found that final box. Right size — check. Right shape — check. Right weight — check. Right sound — check! It must be the one. And as I opened it, I smiled ear to ear. There it was — the battery-powered, walking, roaring, combat dinosaur. Wait, batteries? Then I saw the box’s dreaded “batteries not included” label. And just like that, my excitement turned to horror — did I get my dream toy only to be unable to use it?
First Impressions
“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” — Will Rogers
And there it was. First impression blown. Batteries not included. Why? To save a few pennies? What was this toy company thinking? A perfect opportunity to create an amazing product experience completely missed. Why? While I will never know, my hypothesis is that it was one of two things:
- It was a detail missed. Important features were forgotten in a rush to get the toy to market for Christmas and meet demand. Shipping too fast can lead to misses that lead to haters.
- It was an intentional choice. I hope this is not the case; however, companies often make decisions like these to reduce complexity, optimize supply chains, or reduce cost, all in the name of profit. When companies put profit over creating an amazing user experience, it leads to anything but product love.
So as you think about building your minimal loveable product or your next release, remember that first impressions matter.
Details Matter in the Minimal Loveable Product
Some minor features and details matter when launching your minimum loveable product (MLP) or your next loveable release. Your goal should not be acceptance (viability) but instead infatuation, obsession, and love. To create these feelings for your product, you must obsess over the details yourself. Apple doesn’t ship a product, even a first release, without obsessing over every detail, no matter how small. Their goal is to generate positive feelings about the product, whether the form factor, the packaging, or the unboxing experience.
Back to my Christmas gift. Let’s give the manufacturer of my robotic dinosaur the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume batteries not included was a detail missed. A lack of batteries may result from focusing on the product’s viability, not the lovability. It may result from focusing on the core product instead of the external factors — e.g., powering the toy up. In either case, it’s equivalent to spending time at Ikea, picking that perfect piece of furniture, hauling it home, assembling it, and realizing you are missing a screw — a detail missed by Ikea. It creates negative equity toward the product. That loving feeling you had is gone.
Clearly, I was traumatized by that Christmas experience long ago. The label on that box burned in my brain, sticking with me all these years later. When building your minimum loveable product or release, zoom into the details and think about those that can create an amazing experience — whether batteries or unboxing. Details can equal differentiators.
Speed Can Kill Love
Ever been in a conversation where the team focused on output over outcomes? Or velocity over value. These are cultures where agile rules in a bad way. Speed is great, and measuring productivity is essential, but to what end? The love is often lost when it’s about output and velocity, especially in your MLP. The team prioritizes cramming more in rather than focusing on the most meaningful, loveable features that may slow the train. You need to slow the feature train if your focus is a minimum loveable product.
Now don’t get me wrong, shipping is critical. But shipping something high quality and loveable is more important than hitting a date or a feature quota. Sacrificing small but essential details for the sake of a date in the case of “batteries not included” is a miss of epic proportions. Cutting corners and killing features that score brownie points with users to hit a date or quota is never a good decision. There must be a balance between shipping with urgency and creating a minimum loveable product or release. Focusing too much on speed might get the product out the door but leaves the younger me disappointed on Christmas.
How to Create a Minimum Loveable Product
It’s hard. Minimum and loveable are often at odds, and finding the balance is like walking a tight rope over the Grand Canyon without a safety harness. It’s possible but requires careful planning, extensive training, the right conditions, and a solid team. That said, it’s doable. In my twenty years of experience, there are a few steps I have found helpful as you frame the minimum lovable product:
- Make design your first stop. Design always thinks from a user-first, human-centered perspective. They are great partners when thinking through your minimum loveable product, as they will challenge you on what matters.
- Ask, don’t assume. Initiate user research. Find out what’s top of mind, what’s important. What users can’t live without and what doesn’t matter. User research is critical to building an MLP.
- Be a student of the market. Whose product in the category is doing well? Why? What are their loveable features? What makes the product a standout? If you are building a new product or creating a new category, look at substitute products or adjacent categories to uncover motivators.
- Show, don’t tell. When it comes down to getting feedback on the lovability factor of an MLP, show it. Show what you have. See what emotion it invokes. Ask what it’s missing- even if it’s a prototype of the box. That magic ingredient will often surface through these one-on-one, in-depth feedback sessions.
Avoiding the Haters
When building a minimal lovable product, your goal is to create fans and avoid haters. Doing this takes focusing on the details that matter, avoiding speed for speed’s sake, and taking the right steps to surface the things you can do to generate positive product equity. It’s often the small things that only users can tell you which can turn those haters into lovers. So spend the time and, of course, never add ‘batteries not included to your box.
📌 Follow me on:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-utz/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@prodlabio/featured
Twitter: https://twitter.com/prodlabio
