By Dami Ojetunji

Building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) when you are a solo designer is both a challenge and an opportunity. Having to balance research, design, and sometimes even small parts of product management is hard because there is so much to do. You can pick your own path, prioritize clarity over perfection, and only focus on what matters: making it easy for users to solve a problem.

Dami Ojetunji has worked for early-stage startups that didn’t have a lot of resources and needed to move quickly. Her time spent on product teams taught her how to narrow down ambitious ideas into focused products that are quick to launch, useful, and easy to test. She brings this mindset to solo projects as well, where the constraints are different but the fundamentals remain the same. 

The first step is to be clear. Before making any designs or screens, it’s important to know what the product’s main value is. What’s the problem? Who has it? What would prove that the product is useful? Do not forget this. If you do, it’s easy to waste time adding features that do not help the product do its job. A good way to get this kind of clarity is to talk to possible users, find out what problems they are having, and then turn those observations into a simple problem statement. For solo designers, prioritizing user interviews over endless wireframes is not a detour. It’s the foundation

Once the value proposition is clear, scoping becomes the next hurdle. People who like things to look good, like artists, might be tempted to offer a full-featured answer, but sticking to an MVP takes discipline. Dami says that you should create with function in mind, not style. What is the most important thing the person needs to be able to do to get value from the product? The MVP should be mostly about that one user flow. Everything else can wait.

People who work alone can either get ahead or fall behind in feedback loops. When you don’t have a team to question your ideas or suggest changes, it’s easy to miss important insights. Dami stresses how important it is to quickly get feedback from real customers, as it’s important to make sure that the MVP is based on real needs and not just theories by getting feedback on an early version of the product. This can be done through moderated testing or simple polls.

When you work alone, managing your time and energy is just as important as the style you choose. Making an MVP doesn’t mean making models of every screen that look great. It is all about speed, iteration, and validation. You can finish the job with low-fidelity mockups or wireframes that you can work with. Do not worry about how good the display is; just make sure you get feedback right away. Truly, people care more about how well the product works than whether the typography is perfect.

The way decisions are put down is another thing that makes good MVPs stand out from the rest. As a solo designer, documenting trade-offs like what was chosen, what was left out, and why helps me stay on track as the product grows. It also sets the stage for collaboration if engineers or other team members come on board later.

When it comes to tools, keep the stack lean. Dami often makes wireframes and simple prototypes with Figma, keeps track of ideas with Notion, and makes no-code MVPs with Webflow or Bubble. The goal is not to show off the tech stack but to make it easy to go from an idea to an execution. This is especially important in low-resource settings where access to a full development team is rare.

Finally, solo designers need to manage momentum. If projects don’t have external accountability, they might not move forward. Dami suggests setting clear check-in points, like weekly goals, public reports, or even light limits based on interviews with users. These plans make it possible for the product to move forward without giving up the perks of working alone.

If you’re making an MVP by yourself, you don’t have to do everything perfectly. It’s about making smart decisions, moving quickly, and always getting feedback from real users. The experience helps solo designers think about products, strengthens communication, and reinforces the discipline of building with purpose. Given the right frame of mind, it could be one of the most enjoyable things a designer can do.