Five ways to give your product a Minimum Viable Personality

• By: Maxine
• Tweet: @maxine
• June 21, 2013

So the other day @diversionary brought to my attention the idea of Minimum Viable Personality, and pointed me in the direction of the article that started it all. Despite the annoying prose style, I found myself reading it several times over the next couple of days, trying to glean if there was in fact any practical knowledge in there. There’s not, which is fine, really it’s just a call to arms, done in a quirky way. But having read it, what’s your next step? Of course if you had the time and resources, you’d go off and read up on emotional design, maybe starting with Aaron Walter’s excellent book on that very topic, or perhaps even buying a ticket to the workshop he’ll be hosting in Sydney in October as part of Web Directions South, Designing for Emotion. But I think the thing that catches your eye about Minimum Viable Personality is the Minimum part. Not that it’s an incitement to be lazy and do the bare minimum of work, the idea is more “make sure you at least build enough personality into you app so that people will think it has one”.

Now, the first thing you need to do, which I’m actually not going to go into here, is decide what that personality is, and make sure it’s the right personality for your market. Flesh out your ideas with images, words, mood boards and then never lose site of this personality, or miss an opportunity to infuse it into your product. What are those opportunities though? Or more importantly, what are the low hanging fruit that will help you create that Minimum Viable Personality?

Your microcopy

If you’re building a product, I’m sure you already know what microcopy is — those little bits of text and copy that guide and instruct your users. There’s a wealth of reading in this area, but you could do worse than to start with Relly Annett-​​Baker. What I would add is, while avoiding being annoying, this can be a good place to insert a bit of personality. I think the all time classic example of this is Flickr’s way of showing that you are logged in — as in the image below.

Instead of a boring old “You are logged in as Maxine Sherrin”, you get a greeting in any one of a multitude of different languages every time you log in, which is cute and memorable, but also reflects some of Flickr’s core values: friendliness, inclusiveness, worldliness.

So think about it every time you instruct or guide your users, and make sure you have the best possible microcopy to start with, but sprinkle a bit of your app’s personality there as well.

Your 404 page

You can go overboard on this, like the guys who made a short video based around a narrative of special forces soldiers looking for the missing page. Cute, if a little too militaristic for my taste :). Or this one, with a fully functioning game of Space Invaders. But you definitely don’t need to go to those lengths, a simple page is fine, just make sure it reflects that personality you came up with. There’s no shortage of design inspiration out there — start with Twenty Creative and Unusual 404 Pages. Thinking about how your product would respond to this situation were it an actual human being can be a fun exercise!

Your about page

This almost seems too obvious to say, but you’d be surprised at how often it’s a missed opportunity, indeed looking round just now, at the sites of various apps and products, they are as rare as hen’s teeth! Or, if they are exist, they are clearly written with potential investors in mind. Fair enough I guess, but still “boring!” Just from my experience knowing the traffic at Web Directions, you’d be surprised how often people go and check them out (don’t look at ours, it’s terrible! :).

I think this page is one of those jobs that’s often just mocked up at the final hour before you go live, when no one has the enthusiasm anymore for talking about the organisation and the team in a fun and engaging way. Maybe don’t leave it till the last minute, but do it as a fun Friday afternoon hackfest at some stage during the project. I couldn’t actually find too many good examples of these, except in the world of digital agencies, where pretty much everyone has gone to some trouble over them.

• Paper: lovely typography and voice that gives an idea of the people and thinking behind this product
• Madwell: some cute effects for your team bios will never go astray
• H-​​ART: I like their infographic that shows who they are, as well as the video (though it helps here if your team is made up of photogenic Italian people and your office is an awesome old farmhouse outside Venice, so, this may be beyond a lot of our means :)
• Cute-​​Fight: this is a simple page, but these guys do a great job of letting their personality shine through the copy

There are gazilions of these from agencies: get inspired!

Easter eggs

Come on! You’re a developer right? Or you have developers on the team? Make sure everyone understands what the personality of the product is, and have a bit of fun with this. It’s easy to do, and it’s something that people will talk about: instant Minimum Viable Personality. Click the big cloud at the Puppy Tales site. View source at the Oatmeal — but not if you don’t like rude words!! Of all of these suggestions, use this one with the most discretion, but if it is in keeping with the personality of your product, it can be a winner.

Your emails

Sending someone who uses your product an email letting them know about some improvements or special offers you’ve got going? Fine. Sending someone who uses your product an email letting them know about some improvements or special offers you’ve got going while giving them a chuckle and making them feel like you wrote this just for them? Priceless. Don’t be lazy with this. Find your voice and use it every single time. Make sure you customise these communications as much as you possibly can. And if you struggle with writing, go and do a short course on writing for marketing, or business: it’ll be great for your confidence.

There are plenty of people who do a great job of this that you can get some inspiration from: Cute-​​Fight and Amy Hoy are some of the first that spring to mind.

There you go: five things you can start doing right now! What are you waiting for?

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