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Beyond Clicking: Successful 2010 SAP User Experience Conference in Shanghai

By Jeff Zhu & Ying Wang, SAP User Experience, SAP Labs China, Shanghai – August 5, 2010

July 17, 2010, Shanghai – The SAP user experience (UX) team organized the SAP User Experience Conference at Shanghai International Convention Center. Over 200 industry practitioners, university professors, and students from the UX field joined the one-day event.

Drawing on years of experience in user interface (UI) design, senior members of the SAP UX team shared their insights into current business application design, illustrated with examples from SAP's state-of-the-art solutions. Experienced designers from peer companies and university researchers shared their design thinking and speculated on emerging UI technology trends, making the conference a grand gathering for the UX community in China. The main purposes of the event were to underscore SAP's continued dedication to improving the user experience, to discuss problems, and to share ideas among UX peers.


Dan Rosenberg    Michael Arent
Dan Rosenberg
 
Michael Arent

Opening the conference, the MD of SAP Labs China, Shang-Ling Jui, told the story of SAP Labs China and the UX China team and discussed how he expected the team to optimize users' experience of SAP products. Next up, SAP UX Senior Vice President Dan Rosenberg gave his inspiring keynote, Global Sustainability: Where can HCI professionals effectively contribute? The presentation not only introduced the forefront idea of how human-computer interaction professionals can contribute to global sustainability in user experience design, but also demonstrated SAP's efforts and achievements in tracking corporate energy consumption. Afterwards, SAP BusinessObjects UX Vice President Michael Arent shared his innovative perspectives in another keynote speech titled Designing for the DNA of Business, which looked at the DNA of biological systems as a model for today's complex business systems and how design can be applied to them.

Both topics were of great interests to attendees, and evoked much discussion between speakers and audiences later on that day. During the media interview, journalists from IT CEOCIO and Vision Union also requested Dan and Michael to provide more details on sustainability and emotional design along with SAP's practice.


Sylvia Barnard    Jeff Zhu    Alex Zhu
Sylvia Barnard
  
Jeff Zhu
 
Alex Zhu

The afternoon sessions covered a wide range of hot topics in UX design, embracing prototyping, research, and future design trends. Michael Arent, Sylvia Barnard (End-User Involvement Manager in SAP Business ByDesign UX), Jeff Zhu (Country Manager of SAP UX China) and Alex Zhu (Director of Product Management in eBaoTech) all shared their experience at workshops and roundtable discussions with the participants. Professors and students from Shanghai Jiaotong University and East China Normal University also presented their interesting research projects in the academic research session.


Media interview with Dan and Michael    Hot discussion after workshop    Hot discussion after workshop
The audience
 
Media interview with
Dan and Michael
 
Hot discussion after workshop

Attendees really enjoyed this informative and enlightening UX conference, and provided invaluable feedback:

  • "Your conference is so exciting and I even ran into some old friends I had lost contact with for years. We can see from this conference that SAP pays much attention to UX, which is a very remarkable move within the industry."
  • "Really appreciate the high quality conference, it is great for knowledge-sharing and peer communication."
  • "Based on the success this year, we'll offer more opportunities to stay connected with UX peers in China," said Jeff Zhu. "These networking activities will help channel fresh ideas into our work and ultimately contribute to the constant improvement of SAP products."

Encouraged by the positive feedback from the attendees and, more importantly, motivated by the stimulating prospect of innovating for SAP product users' experience, the SAP UX China team will continue to take the lead in promoting advanced UX concepts in China by leveraging the creative power of the local talents.

In response to audience requests, we are posting the slides used in the conference. Follow these links:

 

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