• We've finished emptying our storage unit! That's money that no longer needs to fly out the door each month. And I've repacked several boxes that were collapsing, making it possible to stack better, be more organized, and pass on some things that others will like but that we don't need.
• Our landlord found a service that refurbishes old control boards and shipped them the display and relay boards from our oven. The oven display will be working again when he returns on Tuesday.
• Better insoles fixed my favorite hiking shoes – no impassioned argument for a return needed.
• The girl's dance team won first place at her competition this weekend. Good job, ladies!

• My six phase benefit/concept/detail process is going to be piloted in our growth product.
• A work relationship that started with a little contention has become a cordial, iron-sharpens-iron collaboration. Tough but fair, I love it.
• I've been able to refer or be a reference to three former coworkers in the past two weeks. It's nice to know how you can help.
• A couple of weekends ago I chose to do a project for a relative with whom I've had a contentious relationship. This turns out to have been a great choice. I finished the project this weekend; it's nice to feel a sense of accomplishment and to have set a new tone in our relationship, and it cost me only time.

Just like the false tradeoff between security and usability, I don’t want to play into the notion that light scope and quality are opposing forces. We will not make progress if we habitually shortchange quality. An “MVP” of poor experience quality is certainly “minimum” but forgets the “viable” and a bit of the “product.” You could say it is actually below "minimum." For another take on this, see Jason Cohen's Simple, Lovable, Complete.

• This is the first week in quite a while that I fulfilled all of my at-work weekly objectives. Sometimes lowering your sights slightly can pay off. Yet I also feel I accomplished more than recent weeks. It's probably a combination of smaller, more accomplishable (therefore likely better-defined) objectives and actual progress on a thing that's been lingering for a while. We'll see if this is a trick or a technique.
• Having to explain my thoughts about product research/design/development to folks I work with, and having them ask me to operationalize parts of it they don't fully understand, has led me to explaining some of the concepts from new angles. This is challenging my thinking and helping me to firm it up.
• I had a lovely chat with a person who is contemplating moving from designer to design manager. I find this sort of thing rewarding because I like helping, and I like meeting people, and because it reminds me of what I've learned, what I think, and to listen first. It's tempting to opine, but only valuable lightly and if that opinion is actually relevant to the person's situation or question.

Be it version three or an MVP, the experience we deliver should

• be valuable to specific users
• be usable by those users
• conform to or enhance the user's understanding of the subject area
• be pleasant to use
• be visually polished
• deliver value in results and conveniences
• minimize toil
• be complete in its delivery of the uses we offer
• be complete in its states, messages, and errors
• make good use of familiar controls and interaction paradigms
• make success obvious
• be obvious in expected actions and right action
• be self-explanatory, relying on recognition rather than training and recall
• be well-labeled
• be instrumented so we can witness users' successes and difficulties

…even if the scope is small, even if it's a little slice of functionality from a bigger, longer-term plan, even if it is a fragment of the excellent future we envision. Even the basics should be built completely, with thoughtfulness and pride.