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Breathing New Life into the SAP Design Guild
By Christine Wiegand, SAP
AG, SAP Design Guild Team – September 1, 2000
Dear visitors,
We created the SAP Design Guild as a resource for the user interface community.
Here readers can exchange information and opinions on visual and user interface
design issues. In addition, SAP offers its design resources in the form of style
guides, methods, and insights into how a user-centered development process should
be carried out and institutionalized. In effect, how to facilitate the mind
change within a company towards user-friendly software.
Because we concentrated our efforts on pooling these resources and preparing
them for the site, the SAP Design Guild has up to now been a more or less "static"
medium. Now it is time to shift our focus to discussion. Therefore, we added
two new and more interactive sections - "Forum" and "Opinion" - to the SAP Design
Guild. Moreover, we are making updates to the SAP Design Guild more visible.
Our homepage now features a "News" area that lists the most recent changes and
additions to our site.
While the static resources of the SAP Design Guild are still an important "selling
point," we want to supplement these with content that changes daily, fortnightly,
and quarterly:
- The "Construction" section is the relatively stable part of the SAP Design
Guild. Some guides may be updated and new guides added, but fortunately these
materials do not change too often.
- The "Innovation" section of the SAP Design Guild is tied to our editions,
which appear 3 to 4 times a year. Here, experts from outside and inside SAP
dedicate articles to one "hot" topic in the SAP or UI community. Our first
edition was published in August of this year, featuring the topic "mySAP.com
Workplace and MiniApps - Steps towards a Personalized and Efficient Electronic
Work Environment." The second edition is scheduled for December 2000 and will
focus on reporting.
- Now let's talk about the newest additions to the SAP Design Guild. The "Opinion"
section features articles which are updated fortnightly. Every two weeks you
will find editorials like this one, but also articles on design issues, opinions,
and personal view points, or even critical comments on what is going on in
the UI field. We also firmly hope to offer "readers' contributions" to further
stimulate discussions among UI people and build a community around the SAP
Design Guild.
- And what does a community need most? A discussion board! Well, here it is,
named "Forum", and it is up to you to bring it to life. The SAP Design Guild
team will watch, but not moderate the board. Of course, we will include our
answers and opinions, but it is a readers' board, not a board for the Design
Guild team. If you wish to ask the team questions directly, please send them
to sapdesignguild@sap.com, and
our team will answer you personally. Of course, we hope that our new "Opinion"
section will be one of the driving forces for discussions going on in the
board.
Finally, we would like to ask your opinion about a free, but restricted membership,
including the following services:
- a newsletter about current activities in the SAP Design Guild and the SAP
visual and user interface design fields
- mailings announcing important additions to the SAP Design Guild
- optional inclusion in a data base (either freely accessible or restricted?)
of graphic designers and UI people in the SAP environment; this list may help
you network with colleagues in other companys, or even your own company, who
work in similar areas or have similar problems.
Why don't you proceed directly to the discussion board and tell us and other
visitors what you think about this idea?
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