As a tool that enables people to visually connect ideas and information, Mindjet’s MindManager 8 for Windows needs to enable users to interact with that information in ways that are fast and intuitive. To better meet that need, the company added support for several new features in Windows 7. Mindjet took advantage of multitouch gestures to make the user experience more fluid and natural, used Windows Taskbar thumbnail previews to facilitate working with several maps at once, and built on Jump Lists to provide faster access to common tasks—all contributing to a more natural, intuitive, and productive user experience. The company was able to deliver its updated version of MindManager quickly and cost-effectively, and expects the new release of its flagship software to help drive new sales.
Situation
Mindjet provides personal productivity and collaboration solutions that enable users to save time, improve business processes, and drive innovation by visually connecting ideas and information. Used by more than 1.5 million people and in 60 percent of all Fortune 100 companies, the company’s MindManager for Windows uses the concept of “mind mapping” to help users efficiently organize complex ideas and processes. Surveys show that Mindjet increases productivity by up to 25 percent by making many common tasks more efficient and effective.
MindManager uses diagrams to represent relationships between words, ideas, tasks, and other types of information. The elements of a mind map are arranged around a central theme and are classified into groupings, branches, or areas to represent relationships between the different pieces of information. “By presenting information in a graphical, nonlinear manner using colors, icons, and markers to aid in visualization, MindManager supports a natural and intuitive approach to capturing and managing ideas and information,” says Bill Creekbaum, Director of Product Management at Mindjet. “Users can see the ‘big picture’ more immediately than when using long, linear documents, and without losing track of the smallest details.”
As a visual productivity tool, MindManager enables users to capture large amounts of information quickly and in a way that complements their workflow. Just as important, users need to be able to interact and engage with that information in ways that are fluid and intuitive. “MindManager is all about productivity in that it enables users to work with volumes of information in a way that’s easy and natural,” says Creekbaum. “A mind map is great for providing a high-level overview of a topic at a single glance, but users also need ways to easily expand a topic to visualize additional detail or collapse a topic to see how it relates to other ideas and concepts. That’s why we’re always looking for ways to make performing these and other tasks using MindManager natural and intuitive.”
Solution
The latest version of MindManager adds support for several new features in the Windows 7 operating system to deliver a more natural, intuitive user experience—especially when used with new “multitouch” hardware. “The combination of MindManager and Windows 7 is a powerful solution for our customers, enabling them to organize, manage, and communicate ideas faster and easier than ever before,” says Creekbaum. “Windows 7 multitouch gestures make the MindManager user experience more fluid and natural, Windows Taskbar thumbnail previews facilitate working with several maps at once, and Jump Lists provide faster access to common tasks.”
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| Figure 1. With Windows Taskbar thumbnail previews, users can navigate to any open mind map. |
Multitouch Gestures: Making New Things Possible
By taking advantage of support for multitouch gestures in Windows 7, MindManager enables users to control what happens on multitouch-enabled computers by using more than one finger. For example, users can zoom in on part of the screen by moving two fingers apart, or zoom out by moving two fingers closer together. “Adding multitouch support to MindManager was a natural decision,” says Creekbaum. “Users of MindManager will greatly benefit from the more fluid user interactions that multitouch gestures allow.”
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For Mindjet, Windows 7 represents a tremendous business opportunity…. We plan to leverage the adoption of Windows 7 to gain more satisfied customers and to increase our market share. |
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Neil Mendelson
Vice President of Products, Mindjet |
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Creekbaum cites the ability to zoom in and out using two fingers as a good example. “As visualization aids, mind maps are begging to be touched,” he says. “However, with single-touch, users were limited to mimicking mouse movements with a finger. To zoom in, they had to first center the map on the area of interest and then click the Zoom button or grab and drag the Zoom slider. With multitouch, there’s no need to center a map or fumble for controls. Instead, using two fingers, the user can execute the Zoom command in the desired location.”
Mindjet also implemented a custom multitouch gesture that enables users to expand a topic by rotating one finger around another in a clockwise direction, or to collapse a branch in a mind map by using a counterclockwise rotation. “Mind maps can have more than 20 layers,” explains Creekbaum. “In the past, to expand or collapse a selected topic, people had to use buttons, menu commands, or keystrokes. Today, with our custom multitouch gesture, each 30 degrees of rotation expands or collapses the topic by one level. One professor who uses MindManager in the classroom commented that this feature really helps him maintain contact with his class instead of diverting his attention to deal with his computer.”
Everyday Tasks Faster and Easier
MindManager takes advantage of thumbnail previews provided by the Windows Taskbar (see Figure 1). “Before, with Windows Vista®, if users had multiple maps open, they would still see only one preview on the taskbar for whichever tab was active,” explains Creekbaum. “With Windows Taskbar previews in Windows 7, users can navigate directly to any open map. This provides a significant productivity gain because, like mind mapping, it enables people to navigate using visual cues—with the desired map never more than a click away.”
MindManager also builds on Jump Lists in Windows 7, which enable users to quickly find maps that they have used recently. Because Jump Lists are extensible, Mindjet was able to provide direct access to tasks that previously were available only from within the application. “Many customers want to quickly create a new map or join a collaboration session, so we added custom Jump List tasks that enable them to initiate those actions without first opening the application,” says Creekbaum.
Other new and improved features in Windows 7 will benefit users without any development on the part of Mindjet. For example, improved handwriting recognition in Windows 7 will benefit anyone who uses the application on a Tablet PC, as do many of the company’s customers.
Benefits
By adding support for new features in Windows 7, Mindjet is delivering a more natural, intuitive, and productive user experience. What’s more, the company was able to update MindManager to support Windows 7 quickly and cost-effectively, with just a few weeks of developer effort. When combined with the strong market momentum behind Windows 7, the additional user benefits provided by the latest version of MindManager are expected to help Mindjet drive considerable new sales.
“As a company, Mindjet is focused on information workers and the myriad of information they deal with day-to-day,” says Neil Mendelson, Vice President of Products at Mindjet. “MindManager running on Windows 7 helps customers more effectively manage, organize, and act on that information to solve real-world business challenges.”
Improved User Experience and Productivity
For Mindjet customers, the primary benefit of the company’s work with Windows 7 is increased productivity. “The user interface–related enhancements in Windows 7 dovetail nicely with our visual productivity software, and the combination of the MindManager visual metaphor and multitouch support is especially powerful,” says Creekbaum. “Windows Taskbar enhancements and Jump Lists also improve speed and efficiency for MindManager users, making the ability to interact with information a more immediate and fluid experience.”
Adds Mendelson, ”After customers start using MindManager, it becomes a habit that they enjoy every day. Windows 7 elevates this experience with elegant fades, high-fidelity Taskbar previews, and improved user interaction to make every MindManager session a richer experience. With Windows 7, we’re delivering the capabilities that customers have been asking for.”
Rapid Time-to-Market
By building on Windows 7 using the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition development system, Mindjet was able to deliver an improved user experience without a large investment. “Most of the multitouch gestures we support are core to Windows 7, meaning that we didn’t need to do a lot of custom software development,” says Creekbaum. “The entire effort only required two developers for six weeks, even though MindManager is still a native Win32-based application. As a product manager, being able to deliver an entirely new level of interactivity for a product that’s built on a legacy code base is a huge win.”
Creekbaum also cites the lack of any major compatibility issues as contributing to the rapid time-to-market. “We were already compatible with Windows Vista, so compatibility with Windows 7 wasn’t an issue,” he says. “We spent a week getting MindManager to run correctly in 32-bit mode on 64-bit systems, but that’s about it. Considering that we didn’t officially support running on 64-bit systems before, being able to tell customers that we now support it was well worth the effort.”
Obtaining Windows 7 logo certification for MindManager 8.2 was even easier, taking just a few hours of effort. “Requirements for logo certification were very clear, so we knew exactly what to do,” says Creekbaum. “We tested our software and passed the first time. Large customers have already called to ask if we’re compatible with Windows 7, and the ability to say that we are is a powerful sales benefit.”
Significant Revenue Potential
Combined with the new release of MindManager, the strong market acceptance of Windows 7 is expected to help Mindjet sell more software. “Many of us at Mindjet have been running Windows 7 on our production machines since early this year, and the experience has been great,” says Creekbaum. “We’re excited to see Windows 7 come to market because we think that it provides a compelling reason for customers to update their technology—not just new hardware running Windows 7, but also MindManager.”
Continues Creekbaum, “Microsoft has done a good job bringing developers up to speed on Windows 7 and making resources available to help accelerate the development process. When you combine that with the fact that hardware vendors are already shipping multitouch computers, Mindjet and other software vendors have all we need to deliver solutions that ‘light up’ on Windows 7.”
Adds Mendelson, “For Mindjet, Windows 7 represents a tremendous business opportunity. We anticipate that a large number of customers will move to Windows 7 for its performance and productivity advantages, with many of its features lending themselves very nicely to the MindManager road map and to what our customers have been asking of us. We plan to leverage the adoption of Windows 7 to gain more satisfied customers and to increase our market share.”
Windows 7
Works the way you want: Windows 7 will help your organization use information technology to gain a competitive advantage in today’s new world of work. Your people will be able to be more productive anywhere. You will be able to support your mobile work force with better access to shared data and collaboration tools. And your IT staff will have better tools and technologies to help enhance corporate IT security, protect data, and efficiently deploy and manage systems.
For more information about Windows 7, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7
For More Information
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www.microsoft.com
For more information about Mindjet, visit the Web site at:
www.mindjet.com
