EnjoyTech

Gamification is a hot topic for consumer applications. It is changing the way the companies, especially the start-ups, design their applications. The primary drivers behind revenue and valuation of consumer software companies are number of users, traffic (unique views), and engagement (average time spent + conversion). This is why gamification is critical to consumer applications since it is an effort to increase the adoption of an application amongst the users and maintain the stickiness so that the users keep coming back and enjoy using the application. This isn't true for enterprise applications at all. For consumer applications, the end user and the buyer (if they pay to use) are the same. e.g. Amazon, eBay, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. For enterprise applications, the end user is not the buyer. The buyers of enterprise applications write a check but don't use the applications, and even worse, the end users have a little or no influence on what gets bought. The on-premis

Bruce Nussbaum, a design thinking thought leader and a professor of Innovation and Design at Parsons The New School of Design, recently wrote that Design Thinking Is A Failed Experiment . He claims that: "Design Thinking has given the design profession and society at large all the benefits it has to offer and is beginning to ossify and actually do harm." Rubbish. I would argue otherwise. Design thinking is not a catchphrase anymore, and that perhaps is an issue for someone like Bruce who wants to invent a new catchphrase to sell his book. When I tweeted his post, Enric Gili - a friend, co-worker, and a design thinker whom I respect - had to say this: I couldn't agree anymore. I have learned, practiced, and taught design thinking, for living. I have worked with folks from IDEO , closely, very closely. I have mentored students at Stanford d.school and I live and breathe design thinking. I don't think of it as a method that goes out of fashion. For me, it's a relig