4 ms·

Ask HN: How to build a Minimum Viable Product that is a smartphone app

I am hoping that someone with more experience building Minimum Viable Featuresets for products can tell me. I can understand the value in building a MVP around a SaaS(Browser based), because its quite easy to add features, and deploy with out much disruption. But, how does one do it in the smartphone app arena? I have quite a number of apps on my android phone that have never been updated since install, and if I release the bare minimum featureset as part of Version 1.0, wont I stand the risk of my initial launch base possibly never being able to experience my Version 1.x feature release? Or should I be releasing Version 1.0 to a closed (invite only) user base and iterate like crazy based on feedback received from them before doing a public launch? Any advice is very much appreciated.

aditya 16y ago
Invite only is a good idea for an MVP, and you could also write it as a browser based app using jQTouch or jQuery Mobile (not sure what the android equivalents are) and use that to prove the concept.
jconley 16y ago
Typically you'll want to build in your own auto-update check, which could be as simple as a current version txt file hosted on your web server. That way people don't have to go to the centralized update location to update to your latest version. You let them know when there is an update at some point after your app launches.