In the world of product development, Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and prototype are considered two of the most important phases, which give customers early access and idea of the product. While both of these product versions hold significance of their own, it’s important to understand the difference between each. In this blog, we’ll dig deeper into the purpose and characteristics of MVP and prototype and explain which one you should choose for your software project.

What is an MVP?

Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a product version that includes just enough of the core features to meet the basic requirements of the early users and adopters. It is a test version of the product that is used to validate the features and assumptions, and gather feedback from the users. The objective of developing an MVP is to validate the product concept, understand product features and user needs, and determine if it’s fit for the market without having to build a complete product. 

Purpose of MVP

• Expectations: Understand if the product will fulfill user expectations.

• Market Demand: Predict the potential market demand of the product.
• Gather Feedback: Helps to get valuable feedback and insights in the further shaping and development of the product.
• Save Resource: Reduces the risk of resources being wasted on low-potential products.

Key characteristics of MVP

• Basic Function: Includes only the basic functions of the product that solve the primary problem, while extra features are not yet developed. 
• Gather and Implement Feedback: It helps to get the feedback from the early adopters and implement it to improve the product and make it a better fit for the market.
• Test Market Viability: Only the basic features are developed, so market viability can be checked while still saving cost.
• Improve Product: It helps to improve product over time by implementing feedback gathered from early users.

What is a Prototype?

A prototype is an introductory version of a product designed to visualize, test, and explore ideas before the development of the final product. It may be a physical or digital representation of the final product and is often created to identify certain aspects of the product, like the final design, functionality, and user experience. It is used only for internal testing, validation, and refinement and not for commercial purposes. 

Purpose of Prototype

• • Early Validation: Helps developers test and validate the idea. This allows developers to get a clearer picture of the product without investing a significant amount of time and resources on a fully developed product.
  • Feedback: It helps developers collect feedback and implement it.
  • Risk Reduction: Detects the potential technical, design, or usability issues, which prevents the problems at launch.

• Stakeholders Involvement: Presenting a prototype provides excitement, builds trust, and shows directions to the stakeholders, and can be an effective communication method between the developers and stakeholders.

Key Characteristics of Prototype

• Not fully developed: The prototype is not a fully developed version but rather a representation of the core idea used for testing only.

• Iterative in nature: Modifications and alterations are made implementing feedback collected through stakeholders to improve or adjust the features of the product.

• Simple design: It is developed to represent the core ideas to the stakeholders only. So, it has a simplified rough design forced on the core idea only.

• Developed as an experiment: Prototypes are developed with the intention of exploring ideas and experimenting with the feedback.

Difference Between MVP and Prototype

Definition

• MVP: MVP is a smallest yet functional version of the product that includes only the essential features required to solve the problem. 
• Prototype: Prototype is an early and incomplete version of the product that is used to validate the product idea.

Purpose

• MVP: MVP is launched for the early users for gathering feedback and examining the market viability of the potential product.
• Prototype: Prototype represents the product concept, functionality, and design to the stakeholders and collects feedback before the actual product and features are developed.

Functionality

• MVP: MVP is a functional version of the product that includes all the basic features required to solve the problem while it’s not polished with final design and features.
• Prototype: Prototype is more of a rough draft of the core product idea, which is not fully functional yet provides insights on what that final product is going to look like.

Development Stage

• MVP: MVP is a physical form of the product after the planning is complete and consists of only the major functionality to solve the problem.
• Prototype: Prototype is a rough draft of the product created for reviewing the concept before the actual product development lifecycle starts.

Use Base

• MVP: MVP is launched to real-world users to get genuine feedback about the scope of the product and the problem it solves.
• Prototype: Prototype is created for representing the product idea to the engineering team, stakeholders, and investors to gather further information on the product features, design, and usability.

When to Use MVP?

MVP is suitable to use when:

• There is an idea for a new product, but you need to test its market potential and viability with customer feedback.
• You need to know if the product is a good fit for the market and has demand and growth potential.
• You don’t have enough resources to go all in for product development yet want to attract possible investors, and stakeholders.
• You don’t want to risk coming across a problem where you’ve invested too much and there’s no going back or further due to low demand.

When to Use a Prototype?

Prototype is suitable to use when:

• You need to visualize the design and user experience without developing the product.
• You need to explore concepts and check how they actually work in practice while working on a new product.
• You need to gather feedback from stakeholders, and users to align with the business goals.
• You need to test product feasibility and functionality.

MVP vs. Prototype: Which One Should You Choose?

Both MVP and Prototype have their own objectives, benefits, and functions. You should choose a prototype when you need to validate a design or concept before going full-phase on the development. On the other hand, you should choose an MVP if you’re ready to test the product with real users and gather feedback to make the product better and more user-friendly. While you might want to consider several factors before developing either a prototype or MVP, such as the stage of development, the goal of testing, or the availability of resources, the end results both provide are different and are used for different purposes.