“Be stubborn on vision but flexible on details.” – Jeff Bezos

In April 2017, I wrote an article on the importance of creativity and flexibility in developing “leapfrog” technology. Little did I know that one month later we would totally alter the form factor of our product. This change in form factor from a standard medical device to a connected mobile health smartphone accessory has changed the path of our company for good. The motivation behind this decision included considering marketing, distribution channels, financial, workflow, development cost and consumer cost considerations. The reaction from investors, partners and potential customers was positive, and we were able to unveil our product, the Vital Health Mod, at CES 2018 and MWC 2018 with our partner Lenovo/Motorola in preparation for a mid-2018 product launch. The design of the product even won the Best of MWC 2018.

This is the fourth medical platform that I have launched, and it was the most challenging. The challenges stemmed from the fact that we are doing something totally novel. There was no blueprint to follow when designing the first integrated multivital sign device with finger-cuff based blood pressure. What were the most important features to consider? What should the size of the device be? How much historical data should the user be able to see? What price will the market pay for this device? Who is our customer?

The answers to these questions are still not entirely known. However, the only logical and scalable solution to a product design dilemma of this nature is to define the MVP — the minimum viable product. For reference, Techopedia defines MVP as: “A development technique in which a new product or website is developed with sufficient features to satisfy early adopters. The final, complete set of features is only designed and developed after considering feedback from the product’s initial users.”

Here’s some background on how I went about defining our MVP, as well as some tips for how you can do the same.

Prioritize Your Feature Set

I remember thinking to myself, with the limited resources and challenges an entrepreneur has — which includes getting to market as fast as possible — we must focus on the essential functions and integrate all the hardware sensors and features to support remote software updating of the device. This allows nonessential features to updated remotely in the future. This led me to use a tool to manage features and product development at the hardware (electrical and mechanical), software and workflow levels of the design ($120/month USD). I currently have over 110 features that I want to implement of which only 30% have been implemented to date. I expect no more than 40% will be implemented by the time of the first launch … and that is OK!

As long as the user has the ability to successfully execute a workflow in a reasonable time, then the first reaction will be positive and improvements can be made later.