What to incorporate into your MVP/first version to gain user insights for the next version?

Question

I'm building a product and have ideas for future features, but I want to make sure the first version of the product, the MVP, is designed in such a way that I can gain insights into whether these future features would even be beneficial to the user.

For a little background, the page will have a table of items, as well as a button to add additional items. When you click on an item, a dashboard would open with additional information about the item, broken down into sections.

Some things I'm thinking about are: - adding tooltips around inputs in forms, to see where users struggle and could use further information (if they click on a tooltip, they probably don't understand that input) - adding "was this useful?" prompts around certain tools, to see if users even like what's built in, and is there a tool that could be built out further - separating the sections of the dashboard into separate modals, to see what information the user is interested in based on which button they click (edit, the graph, item history. etc)

Any additional ideas? Links to related resources are welcome as well!

Answer 1

As an MVP I would only show what it can do on a website with a subscribe button. Let people enter their mail addresses if they are interested in what you are offering.

That way you can measure hype and interest in your product.

So don't build the product yet. Build the pitch. Show all it will do in the future and how it will benefit the future users.

Good luck.

Answer 2

1. Imagine a task that could be solved using the new features of your application.
2. Create a simple clickable prototype that only implements the functionality necessary to solve the task
3. Ask potential users of your application to solve the task by clicking in the prototype
4. Watch and learn

This is how I validate all new features and design ideas. It's cheap and it's quick.