User Expe­ri­ence in the Mobile World

User can expect their SAP sys­tems to give them an instinc­tive expe­ri­ence where the sys­tem is used prag­mat­i­cal­ly with sens­es just like the user inter­face of any oth­er well-designed app. I will use this blog entry to dive deep­er into how a suc­cess­ful SAP user expe­ri­ence is designed for the mobile world where users are rarely found work­ing from their desks.

A mod­ern SAP user expe­ri­ence is heav­i­ly based on Fiori user expe­ri­ence solu­tions. User inter­face ele­ments offered by Fiori offer a scal­able expe­ri­ence and enable work on desk­top machines as well as on tablets and smart phones. This is impor­tant as many pro­fes­sions are no longer attached to a sin­gle loca­tion of work. A ware­house employ­ee cov­ers sev­er­al miles in a day around the ware­house, so it is impor­tant the employ­ee has a sim­ple, mobile and real-time solu­tion for data input and inspec­tion. Pro­fes­sion­al and exec­u­tive work­ers might find it frus­trat­ing that even some of the sim­plest pro­ce­dures are not mobile device com­pat­i­ble. What if they could be?

I’ve list­ed 5+1 points that intro­duces you to the cre­ation of a mobile Fiori user experience:

User paths and stories

Whether you are design­ing a vast enter­prise resource plan­ning solu­tion or a sim­ple appli­ca­tion to share, for instance, recipes, every user expe­ri­ence design begins with under­stand­ing what is the application’s pur­pose and how do peo­ple who will use it expe­ri­ence it. In oth­er words, a user expe­ri­ence design­er is not the user.

In this research phase, user habits are ana­lyzed, and dif­fer­ent user pro­files are cre­at­ed which will aid in the design process. More­over, it is pos­si­ble to com­pare your ideas to sim­i­lar Fiori appli­ca­tions that have been pre­vi­ous­ly cre­at­ed and are avail­able. For instance, SAP’s pro­to­typ­ing tool offers a gallery of pro­to­types that can be used to brain­storm ideas.

The vital part, nev­er­the­less, is that the Fiori user inter­face design­ers have a clear under­stand­ing of the organization’s strate­gies, busi­ness and processes.

Only the essential

If you have ever used SAP GUI as your user inter­face, you may have noticed that var­i­ous screens con­tain a lot of fields and oth­er ele­ments that are rarely used. Because of this, some users have found the expe­ri­ence to be con­fus­ing and the pur­pose of some func­tions have remained vague. In the design phase, such irrel­e­vant ele­ments are dis­re­gard­ed from the appli­ca­tion. The appli­ca­tion will only have ele­ments that are nec­es­sary and comprehensible.

Data input should be auto­mat­ed to the largest extent, and it is rec­om­mend­able to import data from dif­fer­ent inter­faces. With cer­tain tech­ni­cal pre­req­ui­sites, Fiori appli­ca­tions can be built upon exist­ing SAP back-ends but the “fior­iza­tion” offers a chance to upgrade entire sys­tems at the same time and holis­ti­cal­ly inspect your orga­ni­za­tion­al process­es and busi­ness needs.

Design­ing Fiori structures

A Fiori user expe­ri­ence is designed to be as scal­able as pos­si­ble. With scal­a­bil­i­ty, the user inter­face adapts to the screen size enabling easy use on any device. User inter­faces must be designed with scal­a­bil­i­ty in mind right from start and, for instance, con­sid­er ele­ment place­ment such as but­ton loca­tions so that they are eas­i­ly acces­si­ble on mobile touch screens. Fur­ther­more, nav­i­ga­tion func­tion­al­i­ty must be con­sid­ered so that it works intu­itive­ly with both mouse and finger.

When the pur­pose of an appli­ca­tion and its use cas­es are well under­stood, the appli­ca­tion can be designed on var­i­ous Fiori tem­plates that are offered by the SAP pro­to­typ­ing tool. The appli­ca­tion can be designed on an emp­ty can­vas where dif­fer­ent ele­ments such as cal­en­dars, forms or tables are placed so that they look good on any device.

SAP rec­om­mend­ed tem­plates can also be used in the design phase. These tem­plates might come in handy for var­i­ous use cas­es as such when a user has many task items that require sim­ple actions in the sys­tem. The tem­plates have been designed so that cer­tain ele­ments are locat­ed on spe­cif­ic parts of a screen and the func­tion­al­i­ty has been con­sid­ered so that the user expe­ri­ence is the best pos­si­ble for all devices. This gives and edge when start­ing to design an appli­ca­tion. The use of a cer­tain tem­plate is rec­og­nized in the ini­tial part of the design when design­ers do their research.

Fiori ele­ments: think mobile

Orga­ni­za­tions use SAP sys­tems for mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es in many ways. Some user inter­faces require only lit­tle user inputs and are there­fore sim­pler. Depend­ing on orga­ni­za­tion­al process­es, some pro­ce­dures require a lot of user input and involve­ment. In such sce­nar­ios, the user inter­face become com­pli­cat­ed as it requires mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent ele­ments or even screens for transition.

Espe­cial­ly in the mobile world, this is to be avoid­ed. There­fore, the use of mobile friend­ly ele­ments is essen­tial to cre­ate an intu­itive user expe­ri­ence. For instance, fill­ing out dif­fer­ent forms can be exe­cut­ed so that only some fields are active or vis­i­ble on screen. This way, the rest of the fields become avail­able for users once the pre­vi­ous fields have been filled out.

A scal­able user inter­face is not mere­ly a small­er ver­sion of what you see on a com­put­er screen. Screen ele­ments must be cho­sen so that they are eas­i­ly acces­si­ble and click­able with a mouse and your fin­ger. This means that the screen ele­ments reg­is­ter touch effort­less­ly. For instance, design­ers can choose to use dif­fer­ent slid­ers to decrease/​increase val­ue or place a clear but­ton for nav­i­ga­tion instead of hav­ing a click­able link which might work per­fect­ly on com­put­er screens.

In a mobile friend­ly user inter­face, even the sim­plest solu­tions must be care­ful­ly assessed. For instance, links that are eas­i­ly click­able on com­put­ers must be recon­sid­ered for touch inter­faces and made into larg­er ele­ments such as buttons.

Test, reit­er­ate, test…

The best tool for design­ing a Fiori user expe­ri­ence is user feed­back. Noth­ing is more frus­trat­ing than to present a user inter­face that no one ordered.

Both the design­ers and the users must under­stand that user expe­ri­ence is a process in which not only busi­ness log­ic is con­sid­ered but also human emo­tions and thoughts.

This requires time and reit­er­a­tion. For instance, we at ISLET design user inter­faces very incre­men­tal­ly and we arrange sev­er­al work­shops with our clients where we col­lect feed­back, obser­va­tions, needs and go through new func­tion­al­i­ties and elements.

+ Fiori is so much more

Mobile user inter­face design and the SAP Fiori user expe­ri­ence should not be approached by a sin­gle mind­set where you think how a cur­rent user inter­face can be put into a pret­ti­er pack­age and on mul­ti­ple devices.

Even though this would be an improve­ment, I urge you to think above and beyond. What type of infor­ma­tion would I appre­ci­ate to see visu­al­ized in front of me right now? How can I share real-time data across my entire team? How can I pre­pare my orga­ni­za­tions user expe­ri­ence readi­ness to cor­re­spond with mega trends such as the Inter­net of Things.

Our sys­tems are flood­ed with data. With the help of Fiori, it can be sim­pli­fied and visu­al­ized by, for instance, using role-based tiles on a launch­pad that con­veys infor­ma­tion at a glance. Mak­ing up-to-date reports and visu­al­iz­ing datasets enable the com­pre­hen­sion of a large infor­ma­tion pools and there­fore ease deci­sion mak­ing processes.

In a nut­shell, user expe­ri­ence is not only how things look like – it is a pow­er­ful busi­ness tool.

To hear more, con­tact Hei­di Sin­isa­lo , ISLET Group’s Chief Oper­at­ing Officer.

#user­ex­pe­ri­ence #UX #Fiori #mobileapp #Islet­Group