There’s a lot of people out there advocating using no-code and lo-code solutions to prototype your MVP.
The principle of this is sound – spend less money on the MVP, and spend more time asking customers for their input early on. This approach supposedly let’s you get in the head of your customers to find out if your assumptions about what they want are correct, before you burn through your cash.
The problem is – this sounds like market research. And market research is very difficult to get right. I fear that those proposing a no-code/lo-code “ask the customer” approach are underestimating how difficult market research is to get right.
The big issue with market research is that people lie. People want to be helpful – customers are biased to give you the answer you want. “Oh you’re asking me if I like shopping in Aldi? Yes I do, Aldi’s great!” Customer then proceeds to do every shopping trip from now until the end of time at Tesco.
You know this is right. We’ve all done it with market research…