When you come up with an idea for a new digital product, you’re usually excited and full of hopes to conquer the market and win the hearts of users. However, once your product is launched, it frequently turns out that it’s not as effective as you expected it to be. What is the build-measure-learn cycle, and how can it help you become more successful? Keep reading!
Build-measure-learn. What does it mean?
In simple words, the build-measure-learn cycle is about discovering and analyzing needs and expectations of recipients to see whether your digital product can actually benefit potential users.
When approaching the project with this strategy in mind, you, as a creator and developer, first focus on the end user to test devised solutions as soon as possible and to see whether they actually do their job.
Let’s analyze the build-measure-learn cycle in detail:
- Everything begins with your idea for a product, and at this stage you hope that it’ll solve users’ problems or attract their attention.
- Then, it’s time to create, or build a minimum viable product and bring a part of your idea to life to see whether it actually serves its purpose. At this stage, you measure feedback from users and monitor various elements.
- Finally, it’s time for learning. This means that you use collected feedback to draw conclusions, determine areas for improvement, and make necessary adjustments to tailor your digital product to the actual needs of your recipients.
As you may guess, this circle can be repeated as many times as needed. Hopefully, wise conclusions will allow you to develop a satisfactory end product as soon as possible.
What are the benefits of the build-measure-learn approach?
Thanks to the build-measure-learn cycle, digital product owners can effectively develop solutions that meet the expectations of users. Moreover, such an approach helps to:
- understand users, and therefore develop products tailored to their needs,
- create solutions that really serve their purpose and can bring tangible benefits to your business,
- approach the entire process with agile software development principles in mind,
- advertise the digital product before it’s actually created. By asking users for feedback, you actually inform them about your plans. This way, they’ll probably want to test the solution once it’s ready and see whether you’ve implemented their suggestions,
- position yourself as a company that cares about customers. Asking users for feedback and taking their comments into account when developing your product will tell them that you actually strive to cater for their needs,
- save time. Testing your product in its initial stages means that you can save a lot of time and implement needed refinements right away,
- develop better solutions. We all learn best from our mistakes. The same applies to product development. Accurate remarks from users will help you quickly determine elements that need improvement, and you’ll surely avoid similar mishaps in the future.
The takeaway
Following the build-measure-learn cycle is a great way to take users’ experiences to the next level, show them that you cater for their needs, and develop effective products efficiently.
