Mindmaster
As part of its 3rd annual Forum on Entrepreneurship, Hasso Plattner Ventures sponsored a distinguished award to recognize the best of software design efforts among Germany’s IT companies. Following the theme of the Forum “Design IT”, this award should draw attention to the importance of user-centered design in software development by highlighting an outstanding, real-world example.
As announced at the Forum, Hasso Plattner Ventures has chosen MindMeister by Codemart GmbH as the recipient of the Software Design Award for 2007. Eran Davidson presented the award to Michael Hollauf, one of the company’s co-founders, at the event on June 26, 2007.
MindMeister is a web-based application for collaborative brainstorming using mind maps, a concept visualization technique that has grown increasingly popular in recent years. The product is being developed by Codemart GmbH, located in Bavarian Aschheim-Dornach, where co-founders Till Vollmer and Michael Hollauf manage product development.
Following weeks of jury deliberations (which considered mobile, desktop and web-based applications made in Germany) MindMeister emerged as the most convincing product because it combined a multitude of successful software design aspects:
- Collaborative & people-centered. MindMeister recognizes that concept maps are inherently collaborative and used for communicating ideas: collaboration and team work are built into the foundation of the product, making it easier to co-create and edit mind maps than working together on regular Office documents.
- Impressive browser-based capabilities. MindMeister’s decision to be a browser-based application was motivated by real user needs, not technical fancy: in a desktop-based environment, its collaborative features – such as file versioning and simultaneous editing – would have been less intuitive for users. As a web-based application, MindMeister also runs on multiple platforms, which is another strong advantage for such a collaboration-centric product.
- Fluid and intuitive interface. At the same time, MindMeister’s browser interface suffers no drawbacks in usability and responsiveness compared to a desktop counterpart: despite several layers of feature complexity, the UI is clean and intuitive. New users can readily learn the product, while advanced users will find that common affordances like keyboard shortcuts are also supported.
- Interoperability & Workflow integration. The creators of MindMeister also considered that their product is often part of a larger workflow, an aspect in software design that is often dismissed during traditional development. As a result, this tool offers a variety of meaningful export and import functionalities as well as features for notifications and file organization.
- Feedback-driven, iterative development. The MindMeister team iteratively improves the product by constantly analyzing the use of the application and responding to user needs. The company also uses its newsletters and website to poll the live community of users, who are are asked to prioritize features, help with design decisions, offer insights for better documentation and more.
Because MindMeister skillfully hides the complexity of its full capabilities to first-time users, it may initially appear simplistic. But any extended use will quickly reveal the several advantages of the product and the careful, deeper design decisions that were made during development.
For these noted reasons, Hasso Plattner Ventures chose to recognize this young and innovative German company with the 2007 Software Design Award. We look forward to similarly convincing applications made in Germany that are inspired by this representative showcase of successful user-centered design.
