MVF: Minimum Viable Feature

A couple weeks ago we released a large feature for Hearty that we thought would really help people engage better on our app. The feature was to break our feed into different tabs thus allowing the user to use the feed in a way that made more sense to them and streamlining the game of Hearty. We built the feature pretty quickly and released it into the wild to see how our members received it and to start getting data as soon as we could.

Part of this release was also introducing the idea of "Missions". Missions are user generated content that allows people to ask directly for help with filling leaderboards that they have vested interest in. With this release we made the "Missions" tab the default tab that you saw first when you came into Hearty. Before this release our feed was all algorithmic and system generated based on members activity all across the app. This meant it was always changing and updating in the background giving members an always updated and fresh feed they could interact with and allowing them to identify people and boards they may not have thought of.

The issue with making our missions tab the default feed tab was that it was all user generated and the feed was sequential, so with a still relatively small user base the feed got stale pretty quickly. So members would come into their home page and see the same missions instead of this dynamic changing list of actions they could take and fun they could have. This led to weakened engagement rates on the feed and less recommendations on leaderboards. This in turn led to weaker engagement rates app wide.

Watching member engagement and analytics after the launch we noticed this trend pretty quickly. The first action we took was to make the feed tabs more prevalent so members didn't miss the fact that they could change from "Missions”? to the other tabs and that we allowed them to change their Hearty experience. To do that we made the feed tabs "sticky" so as you scrolled the feed tab bar would stay on the top of the feed. While this was okay on the desktop where we have a decent amount of vertical space, we could not implement it on mobile do to the lack of horizontal and vertical space, so it wasn't a perfect fix.

The next step after creating the sticky feed tabs was to save the state of your feed selection. What this means is that if you choose a different feed tab, and then left the app, and came back later your last selection stayed with you. This allows you to save your own default tab. This led to a little better engagement for power members but still left our normal members in the same loop of seeing static missions and didn't really solve anything for new members or members who hadn't utilized the feed tabs and knew they could change them.

After about a week of letting the experiment run and our numbers not coming back up and seeing our KPIs trending worse we decided that we needed to reintroduce the dynamic feed as the default option. This meant making the "missions" tab the second feed tab and moving our "recommendations" to the first and default tab. On that change our engagement numbers jumped right back up and our leaderboard recommendations started to recover nicely.

Now why is this? On post mortem analysis I believe that our problems all came from the realization that the "Missions" are pretty specific tasks. Meaning that if someone is asking for help on a leaderboard it is probably a pretty hard task and 95% of our members may not have the solution to the problem. So, by presenting these missions as the default option we presented our members with something that they couldn't always help with or take action on. It was a lot harder engagement ask than asking for a direct recommendation and led to a high bounce rate on our home page experience.

While "Missions" are still only shown to members that follow you and you have connections with, it's still a hard task. We still deeply believe that "Missions" have a place in the app and asking for help is a core part of the experience and game of Hearty. We need to think of a better way to present these tasks in a way that doesn't deter from the overall experience and joy of recommending and rewarding good people that you may not have thought of right away.

Leaderboards are the lynch pin of our application and allowing already successful boards to grow and flourish should remain a key aspect of our experience. However, we also need to continue to think of ways to help our new and niche boards find membership and grow organically. With the release of our "Trending" section on the new leaderboard dashboard this should help new and upcoming boards find new members.

Now this all leads back to the title of this post. A feature isn't finished once you release it. In fact the opposite is quite true. Upon release it's really just the start of a journey. The more time you spend on the development of a feature and strive for perfection over completion the more time you are losing on getting real actionable data and feedback. What you should be shooting for is getting features into the hands of your members as quickly as you can and then analyzing that feature in real time as people actually use it.

MVP isn't just a term that relates to products as a whole, it is a term that relates to product development in general. Feature development should be thought of the same way. Let's get the minimally viable solution of a feature out and then continue to build on top of it as it's used. You can analyze, plan and speak to as many people as you want but words often don't actually measure up to actions. Roadmap out your features but don't spend months and months building them. Get it out as barebones as you can and then build on top of the results and data you collect.

A lot of large organizations and product teams are failing at this every day. They spend months and months planning, strategizing and thinking through every possible solution and feature and then get it out with a hope that nailed every single aspect of a feature. Product development is hard, and getting it right on the first time very rarely happens. So mitigate that risk and build in steps and short iteration cycles. We typically work on one week development sprints, with product planning and strategizing always happening in real time and meetings about such happening once at the beginning of the week and once at the end. Small agile teams over 3-4 people can accomplish far more than you think when you give them the freedom and ability to iterate and move quickly.

Communication between your teams, stakeholders and leaders are core in making this process doable. Teams with poor communication, lots of red tape and organizational friction aren't able to produce like this. So, what is the bottleneck in your product development team that is prohibiting you? Is it too many members on your team? Strict leadership oversight? Fear of failing? Identifying those bottlenecks in your company's culture and your team's culture will help you achieve the type of freedom that you need to build and ship quickly, always be analyzing and iterating daily. We are always looking for ways to better our processes, our communication and streamline what we do and how we do it. Have thoughts, suggestions or questions feel free to ask. Life is a constant opportunity to learn and better oneself in everything you do so my fleeting thought is to always be thinking about "How can we do this better..." .

We have lots of cool and exciting things coming to our members on Hearty and are so incredibly excited for the future. We love seeing our members sharing experiences, recommendations and happiness all over social and within the app. Please continue to share and make suggestions on how we can better the app, ourselves and the experience as a whole for you and for our future members. Thanks to all that are on this ride with us and continuing to support us as we strive to make networking fun! #GoodVibesOnly

Also if you aren't a member yet, sign up today at: https://app.behearty.co/i/jake !