Great Social Media Conversion Infographic

Over the last 12 – 18 months weak Social Media infographics have been showing up everywhere. Many of them rehashing the same thing as 50 of their clones, but using different colors or images. It’s probably the result of Social Media becoming a media “darling” and the sheer number of infographics rising. So, it was a nice surprise to find a very informative and unique infographic from the team...

Amazon Kindle – it’s not the device, it’s Design Thinking that drives it’s success.

When I go online to buy something, 80% of the time I start and end at www.amazon.com. Recently I got a Kindle so that number will probably go even higher…..and Amazon does a superb job of making sure that it does. What makes the Amazon experience so remarkable, is that the component parts of their service come together to create a superior whole.  Amazon exemplifies idea of  “positioning within an...

Micro ISVs are the Garage Bands of technology

Balsamiq (see prior post) bills itself as a Micro ISV. Until a couple of weeks ago, I had never heard the term “Micro ISV” so I decided to dig a bit deeper. My findings in a nutshell: Micro ISVs are a very interesting concept and are viable because of the seismic changes that we are experiencing in marketing and technology. Here’s a basic definition: “A Micro ISV is an Independent Software...

A Good Wireframe’s Worth More Than A 1,000 Words

If you’ve ever designed a software product or built a complex website, you’ve gone through at least some of the following steps: Gather Requirements Brainstorm & Conceptualize using Wireframes Do the Design Develop Test Deploy Well, step #2 of creating wireframes has gotten a whole lot easier with Balsamiq. It’s a great tool for quickly creating wireframes and mockups. Balsamiq has a...

Design Thinking: 1+1+1=5

Tim Brown of IDEO recently delivered a tremendous presentation at TED on  ”Design Thinking” or System Design and System Thinking.  His ideas focused on design “interactions” versus just individual design “points”. Basically the system is more than the sum of the individual components. The concept really resonates with Rule #5 for successful Social Media: Be Excellent . Let me...