

MDP: Minimum Delightful Product - ilamont
http://blog.invantory.com/2012/02/mdp-minimum-delightful-product.html

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jdietrich
We've discussed this before here, often.

A product can be _unbelievably crappy_ as long as it solves a real pain point.
If your product makes or saves people money, if it saves them an arduous
chore, if it gets them laid, then your product can be actively hostile to the
user and still succeed. There's nothing "delightful" about the vast majority
of consumer products or services.

It's when your benefits are less clear that interface becomes important.
Invantory falls firmly into this latter category - their own homepage blurb
essentially describes them as "a nicer Craigslist". Offering a nicer version
of a commodity is potentially very lucrative, as Apple and Starbucks
shareholders will testify, but it's inherently more difficult to bootstrap.
The incumbent players have enough resources to crush you like a bug, so you're
gambling that they're too dumb or too slow. That's a big gamble, certainly a
bigger one than I'd be prepared to take on a product that's hugely dependent
on network effects.

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chadyj
I think it is about semantics and perspective, but a delighted user is someone
that just saved money, or saved from an arduous chore, or got laid. Delight is
the sensation derived from the usage of the product, not from any particular
feature.

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ed209
I think this post is confusing two stages of development. I would argue that
MDP is a step _beyond_ and MVP.

MVP is not about marketing, word of mouth, promotion (although it's always
welcome). MVP is about building the absolute minimum you can test against your
target market to validate your assumptions.

I just finished a Lean Startup Machine weekend. You know what our team's MVP
was? Us walking the streets of London, approaching our target market,
explaining our offering and completing the service we were promoting (it
wasn't a virtual goods or saas obviously!).

That's right, we didn't write one line of code! But we went through the exact
motions that we would have done if a website existed i.e. attracting interest,
taking details, fulfilling the service and receiving payment.

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randylubin
An oft overlooked point of MVP / lean methodology is that companies should try
to minimize time through the build -> measure -> learn loop. Spending too much
time on the build phase (to get impecable design) can delay critical learning.

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jokull
The central point is that "viable" doesn't really apply to a huge class of
products and things. There are times when a user wants a problem solved, but
in other instances they are looking to add a little something inessential but
pleasant/fun/nice/funny/beautiful/lovely to their life, even just a moment to
connect thoughts or with other people, not because of a job offer or order
pizza, but to add variety to life. In the morning do you just cover up, dress
appropriately or love fashion? There are businesses placed at many points in
Maslow's hierarchy. Software is going to be completely omnipresent and there
will be fewer exciting startups tackling problems at the bottom of the
pyramid. Look at the facebook valuation. For that business, they will have
needed an MDP. Talking about minimum viability of social networking software
is a muddled discussion. That is why I like the idea of MDP. Nice observation.

