Introducing Grand Design to the Digital Domain

By Hartmut Esslinger, CEO, frogdesign, inc. – April 2000

Disclaimer: Please note that this article was written in 2000. Therefore, statements in the articles, particularly those regarding SAP's products, product strategy, branding stratey, and organizational structure, are no longer valid.

Abstract

Today, even as the Internet has opened exciting opportunities to bring grand design to the digital domain, most software design doesn't cut it. SAP is an innovative and cultural brand which makes work and digital experiences both rewarding and enjoyable. Here is where the future of design lies.

Great Design must transcend people's needs, wants and even dreams – it must harness vision. Great products – physical or virtual – which are destined for being at the finger tips of real people all over the world, can claim to be great design, when they are not only useful, logical and reliable, but also appeal to the heart and are overall truly ENJOYABLE.

German-gone-global-success SAP is known for serious enterprise software – but so far not for being a design-leader. Tiny German-gone-global frog is known for cultural-flashy design – but so far not for being savvy in digital media technology. And now ... SAP has user friendly world-class design? and since when does frog create serious software? But then, isn't "world-class software design" an oxymoron anyway? (so far)

There is a classical Japanese Movie "Oni Baba" where a samurai always wears an ugly mask, because he claims to be too beautiful and he doesn't want to have real people feel bad about it. When he takes the mask off at the end, his face has transferred into the mask itself and what is left on the bones is of shocking ugliness. So, when all advertising for professional software and "dot.com" companies never show actual software, it is, because their software looks like the samurai's mask or even his face . . .

Once software user interface design was considered to be as American as Apple Computer's Macintosh – those were standards to be happy about and very satisfied with, and Microsoft caught up to "par" too. However, today, even as the internet and worldwide web have opened exciting new opportunities for bringing grand design to the digital domain, most contemporay software design doesn't really cut it. Because it is very difficult FOR DESIGNERS to understand code, navigation, architecture, bandwidth issues, apps, rendering machines and all the industrial details which are behind any "UI".

Now, innovation comes from a very surprising company: professional software powerhouse SAP. As there always has been something very original to SAP's foundation of positive and conceptual leadership, SAP’s software so far hasn't been much fun to use. And this way of looking at the challenge of making software "fun" was the creative Big Bang, which started a revolution within and around SAP. We started ENJOY-SAP by looking at the world with new eyes. We wanted to re-invent SAP as an innovative and cultural brand which stands for making work and digital experiences both rewarding and enjoyable, and which shows respect and affection for the individual. We wanted to bring people together and help them to improve their professional career and their private lives as well.

We designers have done a good job, when the user doesn’t have to care at all about "the design" – good software design is like driving a good car: everything has its natural place, things make sense, it’s about safe driving and arriving. However, what we design as ergonomic and esthetic front-ends of the software is based upon longer-lasting, physical-tool-based human experiences. But unlike analog tools, software is capable of conveying the dream of automation and only to have to be involved in "fun and big thoughts". The challenge is to avoid, that mediocre software UI downgrades the user to repetitive or meaningless activities and to create software which allows for much more radical solutions and more positive explorations thanks to ever-improving technology. We must also support increasing human needs for simplicity and quality of life as well as eternal emotional-cultural desires and dreams.

Looking at SAP's future, we will move more and more from tool-oriented task-fulfillment to task-oriented tools. So far, true digital-virtual tools are still very few, because program architects normally design their UIs just following programming patterns which are not designed the way real people would think. And they are therefore neither easy to use nor logical. A true digital-virtual UI explains itself in a culture-driven way both by needs and desires. People expect software to do miracles, leading nearly effortlessly to the desired results. This is hard to achieve – as we know. Future interfaces are 3-dimensional and will change with the user, adopt to his/her behaviors and even propose what would be best – again depending on the view-point the specific user may want to choose from:

  • I want to know this – tell me about what makes sense?
  • I want to feel this out – what will it be like?
  • I don't know what to look for – show me a challenge
  • I like this – but then taste can be learned like fashion
  • How much? – less may be better.

Ultimately, software itself and its user interface will become more and more human and – after reading Ray Kurzweil’s book on "The Age of Spiritual Machines" – I would say, yes! even spiritual. But as of today, nobody has yet a real concept of how we humans would interface with a 1000-dollar-computer which matches the human brain-power. Will we interface with a machine better than with our fellow-humans? I think, we will be in for some tremendous surprises – with computing today, we project the future a bit like Leonardo sketched the idea of a helicopter with known technology of his age ... and Cyrano de Bergerac’s 300 year-old description of Moon-People scanning written text into spoken words in his "Voyage dans la Lune" is still un-matched.

Yes, we will grow with the opportunities. I believe that we humans have to dream first, then we realize it – and change along the way. Changing the world for the better is our mission. Knowing this and respecting the fact that it will be hard work and fun, I am sure that SAP and frog will be on the forefront of this mission.

 

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