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SAP Design Guild Newsletters 2003-2004

Last update: 03/19/2008 • Compiled and edited by the SAP Design Guild Team

Newsletters 2008 || Newsletters 2005-2007 || 2004: 32 | 31 | 30 | 29 | 28 || 2003: 27 | 26 | 25 | 24 | 23 | 22 | 21 | 20 | 19 | 18 | 17 || Newsletters 2000-2002

Nothing gets lost at the SAP Design Guild. Here is the archive of our newsletters.

 

2004

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 32 - 11/22/2004

Edition User Productivity

We are pleased to announce a new edition of the SAP Design Guild Website, featuring the topic "User Productivity."
This eighth edition focuses on user productivity in general, and on SAP's User Productivity group that cares for it, in particular.

The overview page of the new edition presents a brief introduction and links to all of this edition's articles.

The first section is introduced by our leading article More Than Just a Pretty Interface featuring an interview with Matthias Vering, Vice President, User Productivity at SAP. He talks on how fresh solution designs help SAP customers' employees work more productively. The leading article is complemented with articles on the notion of a user-friendly enterprise, the cooperation between SAP and its American user group, ASUG, the Contextual Design approach by Karen Holtzblatt and Hugh Beyer, and how increased user productivity helps to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO).

The second section is devoted to the teams within the User Productivity group itself and their main topic areas. This section is introduced by an overview article that briefly presents the teams. Further articles cover the individual teams and their missions. Then there is an article presenting UI First, SAP's new way of placing users at the center of the design process, and another one on SAP's groundbreaking, pattern-based approach to building user interfaces efficiently. The edition is rounded off with three articles on innovative approaches to user interfaces and usability testing.

We hope that you will find our selection of articles interesting, and, as always, we look forward to hearing your comments.

Enjoy our latest edition, "User Productivity," which has been published in cooperation with SAP INFO and SAP INFO Online. Read also our new Editorial, which focuses on the Edition.

More Additions and Updates

• Frontend Requirements and Infrastructure for Accessibility added to Resources
• Golden Rules for Bad User Interfaces added to Design Tidbits
• Australia 2003 – Part 1 desktop motives published in Goodies

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 31 - 09/28/2004

We would like to inform you of the following new additions to the SAP Design Guild Website:

• We published a new "Story" on an ethnographic study by Dr. Carlos Bezos Daleske, responsible for Corporate Development at DaimlerChrysler Espana Holding: Knowledge and Innovation in Administrative Areas – Part I; Part II
• The Books & People section features a new short bio of Rolf Molich and offers a review of the book, A Guide to Managing Knowledge: Cultivating Communities of Practice, by Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermott, and William M. Snyder
• On the new "Quotes Found for You" page we collect the quotes from people of the UI and graphic design field
• What else is new in the Resources section:
  Minor updates to SAP R/3 Icons, SAP Reference Lists, Optical Illusions, and SAP R/3 Style Guide
• Lofoten desktop motives published in Goodies

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 30 - 06/07/2004

We would like to inform you of the following new additions to the SAP Design Guild Website:

• CHI 2004 – A Personal Report
• SAP's Presence at April's CHI 2004 in Vienna, Austria – A Photo Story
• The Books & People section features a new short bio of an UI professional and offers a review of the book, Design Research: Methods and Perspectives, edited by Brenda Laurel

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 29 - 03/29/2004

We would like to inform you of the following new additions to the SAP Design Guild Website:

• Our new editorial "SAP is Waiting for You – at CHI 2004, Vienna" by Matthias Vering (Vice President, User Productivity, SAP AG) offers an invitation:
  The CHI 2004 conference will take place in Vienna from April 24 to 29, 2004, and SAP will be a Champion Sponsor of the conference.
• We have a new "Design Tidbit" on user interface tricks:
  Have you ever wondered how Amazon can know about your interests so well or how Microsoft Office applications adapt menu items to the user's behavior? Is it magic that does these tricks or is it something trivial?
  In this article, the author offers answers to these questions and shows that magic is not needed:
  Adding Value to Your Interface by Using Simple Math and Matching
• In "Stories", we published a new Future Scoe article:
  Professor Alexander Schill from the Technical University in Dresden, Germany, discussed context-sensitive business applications for mobile and heterogeneous environments.
  Future Scope – One Backend for All Platforms

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 28 - 02/24/2004

We would like to inform you of the following new additions to the SAP Design Guild Website:

• The Books & People section features a new short bio of an UI professional and offers a review of the book, Windows and Mirrors, by Jay David Bolter and Diane Gromala:
  Book Review: Windows and Mirrors
• Moreover, we published a list of user interface styleguides of other companies.

We are pleased to announce that SAP has become a Champion Sponsor of the CHI 2004 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. The conference will be held on April 24-29, 2004 in Vienna, Austria. The annual CHI conference is the premier international conference for human-computer interaction. This year's conference theme is CONNECT: CHI 2004 Website

Besides, the SAP Design Guild masthead received a visual face lift. This contribution was made by Peter Eckert of Projekt202, LP. Peter has supported SAP over the last 5 years with leading-edge UI design work for a number of SAP products and even the initial release of the SAP Design Guild. Learn more about Peter and Projekt202 at www.projekt202.com.

 

2003

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 27 - 12/08/2003

We would like to inform you of the following new additions to the SAP Design Guild Website:

• The authors John Hagel III and John Seely Brown added their article on IT Architectures to the Composite Applications Edition:
  The Agile Dance of Architectures – Reframing IT Enabled Business Opportunities
• We have a new Design Tidbit on UI Patterns at SAP and a follow-up article on interaction styles:
  Introduction to User Interface Patterns at SAP
  A Layman's View on Interaction Styles – Part II
• In “Stories” we published the summary of the Future Scope event about the prospects of a post-PC era (originally published in SAPNet):
  Future Scope – The Post-PC Era
• The Books & People section features two new books and a new short bio of an UI professional
• The article about ASUG activities was updated:
  SAP Usability Activities at ASUG Events: Collecting Feedback From End Users
• We also updated the SAP Portal Icons Guidelines

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 26 - 11/17/2003

We would like to inform you of the following new additions to the SAP Design Guild Website:

• We added two more articles to our Edition on Composite Applications: One on Next Practices by Karen Holtzblatt and Jörg Beringer, and a second one on Web Services by Kaj van de Loo
• Finally, we have a new Editorial asking "What is User Interface Design?"
• We published a new Design Tidbit offering a layman's view on interaction styles (Part I of two)
• The Books & People corner has been updated (new short presentations of books and professionals)
• Last, but not least, we polished our home page and some overview pages

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 25 - Composite Applications Edition - 10/20/2003

We are pleased to announce the seventh edition of the SAP Design Guild Website, featuring the topic "xApps and Composite Application Design." In this edition, we take a closer look at composite applications and xApps, SAP's new breed of composite applications.

The overview page of the new edition presents a brief introduction to this edition's topic as well as links to all of this edition's articles.

In the section, Leading and General Articles, "Crossing Boundaries with Composite Applications is an introduction to the topic and this edition. Dan Woods' leading article, "Packaged Composite Applications: A Liberating Force for the User Interface," takes an indepth look at composite applications and the implications for user interface designers.

Included in the section Theoretical Foundations, which offers more theoretically-oriented articles, we would especially like to draw your attention to an external contribution by Prof. A. Bernstein "Process Recombination: An Ontology-Based Approach for Business Process Re-Design."

Finally, in the section Designing xApps, Examples of SAP xApps, members of the SAP xApp team present their first-hand experience with this topic.

We hope that you will find our selection of articles interesting, and, as always, we look forward to hearing your comments.

Apart from our new edition, there are several additions to the Community section:

• A new Design Tidbit, Concept Statements and Website Messages – Part II, continues the short series on concept statements and Website messages.
• An updated Books & People section offers a new book review of Mike Kuniavsky's Observing the User Experience, a new page with links to columns and to articles from usability and design professionals, and much more.

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 24 - 09/17/2003

We would like to inform you of the following new additions to the SAP Design Guild Website:

• The Books & People section has been updated and offers a review of the book, Information Design, by Robert Jacobson:
  Book Review: Information Design
• We have a new Design Tidbit on controls:
  An Introduction to Designing User Interface Controls at SAP
• In "Stories" we published the summary of the Future Scope event at SAP last week about usage of Intelligent Agents for business processes:
  Future Scope – Communication, Coordination, and Collaboration with Intelligent Agents
• The "Info Area" now includes a list of acronyms in the user interface and graphic design field: List of Acronyms

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 23 - 08/28/2003

We would like to inform you of the following new additions to the SAP Design Guild Website:

After a bit of a hiatus, we have a new Design Tidbit:

• After a bit of a hiatus, we have a new Design Tidbit:
  Concept Statements and Website Messages – Part I
• The Books & People section has been updated and offers a review of the classic software design book, Bringing Design to Software, by Terry Winograd:
  Book Review: Bringing Design to Software
• The SAP Style Guide for PDA Applications has been updated (Resources).

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 22 - 07/24/2003

To help you get through the doldrums of summer, we added an editorial about HCI paradigms and two new book reviews to the SAP Design Guild Website:

• Editorial:
  The Times They Are A-Changin' – So Are The HCI Paradigms
• Book Reviews:
  Making the Web Work (Bob Baxley)
  The Craft of Information Visualization – Readings and Reflections (Ben Benderson; Ben Shneiderman)
  

We also updated the SAP Style Guide for PDA Applications (formerly: SAP Style Guide for White-Collar Worker PDAs) in Resources.

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 21 - 06/21/2003

We would like to inform you of the following new additions to the SAP Design Guild Website:

New book reviews in Books & People section in (Community):

• Leonardo's Laptop (Ben Shneiderman)
• Paper Prototyping (Carolyn Snyder)

A new article in Stories (the former Readers' Contributions) about RFID technology:

• Future Scope – A Networked World

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 20 - 05/20/2003

We would like to inform you of the following new additions to the SAP Design Guild Website:

Three new articles in Stories (the former Readers' Contributions):

• CHI 2003 – New Horizons, But What Are They? – A report from the CHI 2003 Event in Florida
• SAP Usability Activities at ASUG Events: Collecting Feedback From End Users
• Software Design with User Interface Patterns: Centered on the User

New Books & People section (in Community) with five book reviews:

• Contextual Design: A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs (Hugh Beyer & Karen Holtzblatt)
• Elements of Graph Design (Stephen M. Kosslyn)
• Information Visualization (Robert Spence)
• Gui Bloopers (Jeff Johnson)
• Web Bloopers (Jeff Johnson)

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 19 - 03/25/2003

We would like to inform you of the following new additions to the SAP Design Guild Website:

• New Design Tidbits on Narrative Interfaces:
  Narrative User Interfaces
• New Editorial (Three Year Anniversary of SAP Design Guild):
  Three Years SAP Design Guild – A Review

Furthermore, we updated the SAP Usability Glossary, the SAP Web Glossary and the Color Glossary.

We are pleased to announce that SAP has become a Contributing Sponsor of CHI 2003. The annual CHI conference is the leading international forum for the exchange of ideas and information about computer-human interaction.

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 18 - 02/21/2003 - Branding Edition

We are pleased to announce the sixth edition of the SAP Design Guild Website focusing on the topic "Branding – Making a Mark on the Collective Consciousness."

Link to the introductory page of the new edition:
http://www.sapdesignguild.org/editions/edition.asp

Our leading article is a survey of the history of product branding at SAP. Further introductory articles define what branding means – including a branding glossary – and offer useful links to various information resources.

The second section of this edition offers articles from designers, including an article from frogdesign, a company that has over the years significantly contributed to SAP's branding activities.

Finally, there is a group of articles presenting SAP software projects and products for branding, for example the SAP Theme Editor.

See below the complete list of articles and authors in this edition. (not shown in the newsletter archive – see the branding edition, for reference)

Moreover, there are two additions to the resources section:

• SAP Style Guide for White-Collar Worker PDAs
• SAP Style Guide for Blue-Collar Worker PDAs

SAP Design Guild Newsletter No. 17 - 01/17/2003

We would like to inform you of the following new additions to the SAP Design Guild Website:

• Editorial on creativity:
  The Rocky Road to Innovative Software Products – An Example
• New Design Tidbits on Documentation:
  How Much Documentation Do Applications Need? – A Simple Example

Currently, we're hard at work on a new edition which focuses on branding. You can expect it in February.

 

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