The Wizard of Oz MVP calls on members of the venture team to perform manually the tasks that the site or product intends to have as an automated function. The team becomes the " man behind the curtain" replicating technology in order to validate it before investing time and energy in implementation. In a Wizard of Oz MVP a small group of users is asked to engage in a beta test of the product. The users believe they are interacting with the technology but are actually engaging with humans behind the scenes who are manually running the service. This type of MVP is best used to test a specific hypothesis, making each MVP a specific experiment that is long enough to get feedback and information but not so long as to hamper the iteration cycle. These MVPs are not about technology or efficiency but about understanding the use case of a specific aspect of a product or service.
Use a Wizard of Oz MVP when you have a strong problem understanding and are looking to narrow down specific solution offerings. Remember - these MVPs should focus on single solution aspects not a suite of options. The more focused your test, the more valuable the results.
Wizard of Oz MVPs allow for users to interact with the proposed product without the venture team having to invest time and energy in building out the back end technology to implement the service.
A user group, a product interface that communicates user interactions to the venture team and a team of human wizards to implement the service.