The Future of Search Engines.
We review how search is likely to change in the near future.
Why you shouldn’t build your own CMS.
Building your own CMS is often a bad idea for all but the most demanding of projects — find out what's the best option for your organization.
CDOs: Lead by Design.
Chief Design Officers are now a key placement for any organization that wants to be a market leader — find out why.
Green Tech.
At Mäd we're committed to making our in-house tech and operations more green—one step at a time.
A Sanity Check.
In product design and software development, a sanity check is a method of quickly and easily spotting fundamental logic and usability flaws without getting bogged down in rigorous test cases and documentation.
The Splinternet
A guide to an important term for individuals and businesses to understand, the Splinternet concept will have huge implications on the ever-developing digital landscape.
Designing Without Content Is Like Tailoring Without Measurements.
When you lead your design with content, you lead your design with confidence. Discover how a Content-Led Approach is a path to ensuring concise, fluid, and cohesive designs.
Web Design Glossary of Terms.
Our A-Z of useful website design terminology will bring harmony to the website design process—allowing clarity during development discussions.
Balancing Features: How Many is Too Many?
"Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It's about saying NO to all but the most crucial features." - Steve Jobs
Why Your Website is Your Most Important Marketing Asset.
A guide into turning your website into an intelligent, marketing-tweaked machine that can convert more efficiently.
Branding Glossary of Terms.
An A-Z of useful terms from the world of branding. We pick out key terminology to help you understand useful activities for brand success.
How to Give Great Feedback As a Client.
The art of feedback is a balance of strategy, collaboration, vision, and empathy. Learning how to give great feedback can be extremely advantageous to output and relations.
Understanding Value Propositions.
Does your product or service offer value, or even better unique value? We discuss value propositions, what they are and how to craft them efficiently.
The Importance of FTU (First Time User) Experience.
Paying attention to the experience of first-time users is the key to achieving longeivity.
Advertising & Marketing Glossary Of Terms.
A useful A-Z guide to various Advertising and Marketing terminologies. Communicate and understand MarComms with ease.
SEO Best Practices.
Beautiful websites deserve traffic. Search Engine Optimization allows you to compete in a crowded online market and stand out on the first page of results among thousands of potential competitors.
Brand Book.
Understanding what a brand book is, why it's important, and how to craft an effective one, can lead your brand to industry success.
Feynman Method.
Feynman was 'No Ordinary Genius', and his method of learning by teaching still continues to create impact and have relevancy to the latest industry findings.
UX Glossary of Terms.
Mäd provides a collection of useful definitions to shed light on the language of effective UX design.
ROI of UX.
Metrics matter. Believing and trusting in quality work is qualified by calculating the impact of the output—and with regards to UX, there are many ways to monitor your ROI.
Journey Mapping.
We discuss how Journey Mapping is used to provide a bird's eye view of a user's process to accomplish their goals.
The Brand Pyramid.
The traditional pyramid is separated into 5 different tiers, each tapping into different aspects of the brand and it’s identity.
Wireframing.
A simple visual of your product or website that allows team members to communicate the structure of your product.
Storyboarding.
We discuss how storyboarding helps designers immerse into the users world in order to develop products or services that address their needs and pain points.
User Personas.
We discuss how personas can help create an accurate representation of key audience groups.
Design Hypothesis.
A method that allows for an idea to be put to test in order to uncover the root cause of an outcome.
Design Pattern Library.
Create an asset library to use as a guideline throughout a project. This library can be used to create efficiency in your workflow while helping maintain the consistency of a project.
AI team members.
We tasked AI with writing a long-form insight on how bots can fit in with our content team.
Prototyping.
A quick and easy way to sketch out your idea either on paper or digitally to find the common errors, get feedback from user experiences to create a functional product.
Site Mapping.
Organising a website vastly improves the user experience. It can also lead to some unique opportunities to guide users through various funnels with ease and added effectiveness.
Solution Sketching.
We discuss how a simple sketching exercise can be used to align team communication prior to the prototyping phase of a project.
Cognitive Walkthrough.
A quick and easy method to identify common problems when users aren't immediately accessible.
Heuristic Evaluation.
We discuss a useful method to discover large usability problems at speed without additional research.
Hopes and Fears.
Akin to establishing anti-goals, mapping out fears alongside hopes can be an invaluable exercise for project management.
Contextual Inquiry.
To improve practices it is important to have full context and understanding of how and why users do what they do.
Systems Thinking.
A holistic approach to analysis that focuses on the way that a system's constituent parts interrelate and how systems work over time and within the context of larger systems.
Start With Why.
Finding your Why defines purpose, motivates teams, inspires customers, generates a loyal fanbase, and ultimately builds awesome brands.
Affinity Diagrams.
Also known as 'The KJ-Method', named after inventor Jiro Kawakita. This allows groups to quickly reach a consensus on priorities of subjective, qualitative data.
Lean Coffee.
A contemporary take on meeting structures is to arrive without agenda, and collectively create a collective format in line with the entirety of the group.
Stakeholder and User Interviews.
The human-centric approach is crafted with genuine data from your target audience. This interview methodology is highly advantageous for aligning your path to growth, and success.
Dot Voting.
A method to facilitate better group decision making, which in turn leads to action through considered consensus.
Website Go-Live Guide.
In the days and weeks leading up to the website launch for customers, it's important to ensure the following checks are done for a smooth and timely Go-Live.
Better LinkedIn Remarketing.
Leveraging the ideal b2b lens from LinkedIn advertising, but with the optimised costing and power of more sophisticated advertising platforms.
Weighted Decision Matrix.
Projects can be paralyzed by a lack of clear decision making. Applying this matrix, we can unblock overwhelming choices and drive healthy growth.
Optimizing Landing Pages.
Learn our approach to building high-conversion landing pages that create business results.
Why Designers Should Learn To Code.
Weighing in on the contemporary dual-skilled discussion, we outline why we're in favour of designers that code.
Why We Chose Landbot.
Communication is key. Discover how Landbot became the new customer hotline for corporate websites.
Crafting Video Content.
As the digital world booms and face-to-face interactions become more sheepishly hesitant, video content is core to effective MarComms strategies.
5 Web Trends for 2021.
Keeping up with trends is important. The changing of trends happens so gradually. It's only when we're immersed in the new season that we start to notice the outdated appearance peeling underneath what we once viewed as 'trendy'.
Anti-goals.
“A lot of success in life and business comes from knowing what you want to avoid: early death, a bad marriage, etc.” - Charlie Munger
Dark UX Patterns.
Dark patterns are deceptive framing techniques used in websites and apps. They make people make the developer's choice, not theirs.
Writing Loyalty Program T&Cs.
Copy and adapt our T&Cs example for a loyalty program, with key consideration put towards the consumer—and your business relationship with them.
The Interconnectedness Between UX & UI.
UI is a part of UX. To discuss UI vs UX is to disregard the interconnectedness of the two very interconnected systems.
Choosing UX Metrics.
Narrowing down which UX metrics are the most important is not easy. There are a lot of variables to consider.
Using Bots to Automate Content.
We review the pros and cons of bots and explore methods that content publishers can use to automate their creative processes.
The Power of a Paradoxical Mindset.
Discover how you can enhance your decision-making process while encouraging your team to work better together with paradoxical mindset.
Win Without Pitching.
Despite its norm and status, we believe the pitch has no place in the creative industry. Stars simply do not audition.
Generating Traffic.
As we humbly celebrate Mad.design reaching the top 100 most visited websites in Cambodia, we analyse our methodology and successes.
An Interview with Anne Gerssen.
Our team at Mäd continues to grow. Today we caught up with our new UX Design Lead to discuss user experience as a craft.
Naming a Brand.
The art of crafting an iconic brand name. We discuss name types and best naming practises.
An Interview with Adrienne Ravez.
Continuing with our expert interview series, we caught up with Adrienne Ravez, the Director of Operations at QED and Co-Founder of Geeks in Cambodia.
Diverse Perspectives.
From how to equally slice a cake into 6 pieces in 3 moves, to how to arrange and alternate a row of full and empty 6 glasses in 1 move. Find out how a diverse perspective is the glue to effective teamwork.
An Interview with Manu Rajan.
Continuing with our expert interview series, we caught up with Manu Rajan, the CEO of Wing Cambodia.
The Sunk Cost Fallacy.
Spent resources need not be ultimate commitments. Knowing when to quit is a powerful leadership quality.
Ad Fatigue.
New ideas aren't timeless. After dazzling audiences with novel thinking, the best fresh ideas fade from 'new' to simply 'great'.
Automating Facebook Replies.
Patience really is a virtue. Unfortunately for businesses, customer expectations for instant gratification is becoming an unavoidable norm.
The Devil's Advocate.
While the name doesn't justify its key role in a team setting, the devil's advocate may just be the growing pains needed to reach great heights.
(Un)Healthy Competition.
Competition can boost creativity and team spirit. However, unhealthy competition is detrimental to the company in the long run. We examine the differences.
The Peter Principle.
Promoting great workers to incompetence: How to avoid the mistake, and make better team decisions to nourish and protect talent.
Managing Multiple Forms in Webflow.
A quick workaround to managing multiple forms and emails in Webflow.
Minimalistic Web Content.
Content is key; but so is simplicity. A minimalistic and crisp content is all you need to produce a high impact website.
Minimalistic Web Design.
Minimalistic Designs, an insight on how minimalism affects the design world, and how important it is to remember that simplicity is better.
Drain The Shallows.
Concluding our Deep Work series, we look at Cal Newport's final rule, focusing on task prioritisation.
Quit Social Media.
As anti-social media discussion grows, quitting social media has never seemed more beneficial. As the third rule of deep work, quitting (or reducing) can greatly unlock productivity.
Minimal Synergy.
On the topic of minimalism in design, we look at brand synergy and how the zeitgeist of design effects cognitive loads and expectations.
Neumorphism.
When UI meets Print, we get Neumorphism. An up and coming design trend that pushes the boundary of realism to the limit.
Embrace Boredom.
Often misunderstood and branded negatively, boredom is the forgotten ingredient to productivity.
1% Carbon Removal.
Everything we do now removes carbon. Discover how our new initiative to change the world, for the better, 1% at a time.
Work Deeply.
Deep work is easier said than done. From building a eudaimonia machine to choosing a scheduling philosophy, to making a grand gesture; find out how the greatest humans integrate deep work into their lives.
Universal Instructions.
Foolproofing doesn't mean your target market include fools, but it does ask key questions about the succinctness of your communications.
The Priming Effect.
Marketing and Psychology undoubtedly go hand in hand. Consumer behaviour, and how to influence, is a dense topic and once again we've found a tactic worth discussion: Priming.
HARO Marketing.
Help a Reporter Out, with genuine ethical intentions, yet gain a marketing boost through well positioned strategy.
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 prior to kicking off a project.
Why Writing Is Important.
Overlooking the impact of great writing can cause a huge difference in your productivity, brand profitability, and general business practises.
Zeigarnik Effect: Marketing.
Upgrade your marketing efforts by adding this proven tactic to your campaigns. Another psychological growth hacking concept.
Survivorship Bias.
It's natural to try to learn and protect against previous failings - but when problems aren't immediately obvious, it can be easy to be misled...
MÄDS100+ (Note and Vote).
Design concepts are developed with strategic, cognitive, and practical processes. We refer to this practice as ‘Design Thinking’.
CV Best Practices.
Tech, and indeed AI, continues to improve at exponential rates, but behind all great brands, businesses, products, and teams, are talented people.
Customer Aftercare.
Customer retention can cause huge positive gains for brands, from word-of-mouth acquisitions, to repeat sales. We dive in to some after-care practises and why they matter so much.
App Gamification.
Due to the overwhelming mobile phone addiction culture, it's no surprise that businesses often turn to creating Apps to boost their brands, and sales. Gamification is one key area to inspire continued App usage.
An Interview with Sopheakmonkol Sok.
Continuing with our expert interview series, we caught up with the CEO of Codingate.
Emotional Intelligence.
Human intelligence is often associated with IQ. Whilst a high IQ may predict an individual's performance in the workplace, it does not dictate the person's performance in a group setting.
