Hi there,
As we reach the end of 2020, we wanted to take the time to wish you a Happy New Year. It has been a turbulent year, yet it is often in the most challenging periods when there are opportunities to be found. We do hope that everyone has been able to find some silver linings.
Please find some updates from Mäd below.
General News.
- New Senior Partner. We’re happy to announce that Kieran Glover is now a Senior Partner at Mäd. While he will continue to spearhead innovative projects at Mäd, he will gain additional managerial and strategic responsibilities.
- New Domain. We’ve now moved our website and emails to https://mad.design. We’ve been receiving a considerable amount of web traffic in recent months (45,000+ page views per month), and we believe this better represents who we are: a Human-Centred Design Consultancy.
- Bloo Growth. Bloo is now in the top 50 websites by web traffic in Cambodia and the top 100,000 globally. This showcases both the significant adoption of Bloo across numerous industries and verticals. We are excited to be launching a significant number of new features that will open up entire new workflows and use cases.
- Acquisitions. We’re happy to announce that we made two acquisitions that we will develop further in 2021:
First off is an exciting product called BoltFlow, which automatically compresses and optimizes the code that you can export from Webflow, one of our favorite Web Design tools. We will be making this product open-source and freely available to all of our current and future clients.
The second is M3 (Millennial Money Management), a listing website that provides a listing of modern fin-tech products to manage your money better. We believe that financial education is critical to ensure that individuals (and organizations) can create long term sustainable plans and achieve their goals.
Clients News & New Wins.
- Axess. We welcome Axess as a client of Mäd. Axess is a leading automotive dealer based in Mauritius, including brands such as Citroën, Ford, Isuzu, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mazda, Peugeot, and Suzuki.
- Phnom Penh Land Development. We also welcome PPLD, a real-estate developer who will be announcing many projects, as a client of Mäd.
- The Atom. A new high-end co-working space in Vattanac Tower, managed by Vattanac Properties. Mäd is designing an innovative mobile application with a 100% contactless check-in flow and launching the new website.
- HungryApp™ Official Launch. HungryApp™ held its official launch on December 16th in Phnom Penh. It is impressive to see something that was purely an idea one year ago already be live with thousands of customers and orders.
Latest Insights.
As always, we’ve been busy researching, discussing, and curating quality ideas that are useful to our clients. Please see below for an overview of our recent insights.
- App Gamification. Gamification’s basic principle is to use the various gaming elements to create an enjoyable structure for your application that replicates multiple gaming features.
- Customer Aftercare. Recurring customers make up the most sales revenue for businesses. While the first impression plays a significant role in influencing the consumer decision-making process, you want to maintain a long-lasting impression on your customers as a go-to business for their needs. Hence, we decided to share some aftercare best practices.
- CV Best Practices. Tech, and indeed AI, continues to improve exponentially, but behind all great brands, businesses, products, and teams are talented people. We discuss how to craft the ideal CV.
- Survivorship Bias. The human mind is wired to respond to climactic moments, so the 1% success stories always get the most public attention and coverage. Survivorship bias refers to the tendency to focus on selective survival stories without studying the facts and evaluate why other people who succeed don’t get the same treatment as the selected few.
- Zeigarnick Effect. Upgrade your marketing efforts by adding this proven tactic to your campaigns—another psychological growth hacking concept.
- Mäd Client Onboarding. If you’re a new client of Mäd, this article will help you understand the process of getting onboarded as a client of Mäd and the various steps to be taken before kicking off a project.
- Why Writing is Important. Overlooking the impact of excellent writing can cause a considerable difference in your productivity, brand profitability, and general business practices.
- HARO Marketing. First developed on Facebook to help the reporter get their information to a place that provides a synergistic collaboration that allows reporters to connect to expert individuals. After many years of helping the reporters out, MarComms seek this opportunity to share their expertise with reporters to gain publicity.
- Universal Instructions. People are different. As such, we interpret the same information differently. Writing instructions for a mass audience can prove both challenging and surprising; we decided to test our team to teach them that assumptions can be costly to success.
- The Priming Effect. Psychology is the key to understand human behavior. For years, marketers have been trying to have a jab at mastering the understanding of consumer behavior. Following this, marketers turn to psychology to gain new perspectives on their target market through the priming effect.
- Work Deeply. Deep work is easier said than done. From building a Eudaimonia Machine to choosing a scheduling philosophy, find out how the most incredible humans integrate deep work into their lives.
- Embrace Boredom. A fast-paced world is one that leaves no room for boredom. Often misunderstood and branded negatively, boredom is the forgotten ingredient to productivity.
- Quit Social Media. Increase your focus intensity by practicing deep work rule #3 on quitting social media. Without any distraction, it is surprising how much valuable work can be achieved and how it affects our mental health to form a better habit.
- Drain The Shallows. Concluding our Deep Work series, we look at Cal Newport’s final rule, focusing on task prioritization.
- Neumorphism. When UI meets Print, we get Neumorphism; an up and coming design trend that pushes the boundary of realism to the limit.
- Minimal Synergy. On the topic of minimalism in design, we look at brand synergy and how the zeitgeist of design affects cognitive loads and expectations.
- Minimalistic Web Design. Taking the less is more approach to the design world, cutting all the necessary activities on the page to remove cluttered space. With a clean modality, you can view vital information with ease—the quieter the space, the louder the message.
- Minimalistic Web Content. In the digital era, written communication speaks volumes. The rise of eCommerce calls for a high impact website with minimalistic and crisp content.
Finally, I would like to finish with some book recommendations based on what I’ve been reading lately.
- The Mythical Man-Month. This compelling book discusses prevalent issues on running large projects, especially how developing software is not like stacking shelves. Adding more resources to projects often makes them slower, more expensive, and lowers quality.
- Leonardo Da Vinci. This biography by Walter Isaacson, who also wrote the famous biography of Steve Jobs, gives incredible insight into one of the most prolific and renowned artists (and scientists!) in history. Leonardo’s life is a showcase of cross-functional thinking and continuous learning.
- Better. The constant drive to improve ourselves is universal, yet this is even more important in the field of medicine, where fatigue, limited resources, and mistakes can cost lives. This book is full of lessons that we can apply to other industries/sectors and clearly shows that there are rarely any easy answers.
Again, we wish you a Happy New Year, and we cannot wait to see how 2021 turns out.
Kind regards,
Manny
