What Is a Minimum Viable Universe?

Soleio describes a minimum viable universe as the smallest amount of information you can put into a system so it can grow, like flash fiction: how much fidelity a fable needs before it becomes a full world. He points to Itty Bitty, a way to encode a small web page, with small web page-like functionality, into a URL. He pictures it as a little portable self-blooming universe. The appeal is not only the clever, tidy implementation.

Nicholas Jitkoff designed Quicksilver as a platform for experimentation with UI paradigms, and it was well suited to that. Itty Bitty was mostly a way to build little things. Unreleased products around recipe sharing and coding environments are also built on top of Itty Bitty. He likes platforms because what you can enable people to make is the most interesting question. Surprising results you did not expect, and emergent utility, come from making something flexible and then seeing what was compelling about it. He would approach the work he is interested in now from a platform standpoint.