Article by joseph watson

SOLUTIONS Joseph Watson

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SAP Design Head Quarters Palo Alto

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“Human-centered enterprise makes the world better for everyone. We create elegant experiences, scale design to amplify its impact, and shape the next generation of enterprise leaders.” SAP Design is a branch of the company SAP that specializes in a way of solving problems internally and for other companies called design thinking. Design thinking is relevant today because it is a new, effective way of problem solving. Design thinking is important today because of its ability to solve problems for companies in a lasting way.

Design thinking was implemented at SAP by Co-Founder Hasso Plattner in 2004.

Goldwasser, leader of the design team at SAP, “[Plattner] read about this thing called design thinking and the founders of IDEO… they were talking about design thinking, and it really reminded him of the early days... when they started SAP, because there were five founders, and they were working on a customer site – this is in the 70s – and they were coding, showing it to the customer getting feedback” (Goldwasser).

Although the process of design thinking is new, SAP has always strived to work in a way that involves the product’s user.

Design thinking is a three step process, comprised of processes called “Discover,” “Design,” and

“Deliver.” SAP uses this method of problem solving to help other companies find where they can improve. Goldwasser elaborated on one of his experiences with design thinking and a food importing company. “We said OK what is the first step? The security guard at the gate. What is the second step? There is some office where the paperwork [is done].

The next one to lift the forklift operator that is taking the stuff. So really go step by step and understanding. Then we go and we visualize this whole process on the wall, on a whiteboard, and this gives us the opportunity to say this is what we heard from you... The security guard we learned is doing the same job three times.

First she writes down on the paper every truck that came in and checked the paperwork.

Then she goes and she copies that into an Excel spreadsheet, and late at night she she’s typing this into a safety system. We said ‘Why don’t we just … build that tablet application for her, [that way] everything she does she only does it once?’ ” The idea of design thinking is to really find what the end user says the problem and how that can be successfully fixed.

Janaki Kumar, a design evangelist at SAP, says, “This is a thought process really … unfortunately

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in software, because everything is so tangible and malleable, it’s very abstract. ... Software technologists tend to go straight to the technology and start coding and creating software products that got further and further away from the needs of the user, because they were working from their own head and their conception of what the user wanted. As a result, the software started to get more and more complicated and they didn’t address the real needs of the people that they were trying to serve.

So what design thinking does, is it really brings that back to the roots.

It reminds people, why are we doing this, [and] what’s the purpose behind all this hard work that we’re doing?”

As we’ve seen, SAP puts a lot of value on creating the product the user needs. Design thinking puts the end user first by consulting them throughout the process to create the best possible product for them. The three step process helps accomplish this by getting all the context. One team visits the facilities they are helping, and finds any problems that might be large disablers of the company.

Next, they Design and Prototype.

This step is completely focused on how the team can design an software application that be put to use for the company and increase

productivity. The Final Step is the deliver step. During this step, there is a lot of back and forth between the design team and the people who will end up using the application. They call this person the “End User”. This results in a final product that is effective, and can be used easily.

Design thinking my be what SAP has always strived for, but it really is the way of the future.

“You see business consulting groups are using design thinking in their work with customers.

You see, it goes into schools for example my kids in their schools you know talking elementary and middle school level their teacher using methods from design thinking they don’t call it that way but it’s sure getting into the curriculum.

So for my kids a lot of those things that I’m working on the process is the way I do it, this is now more natural for them and I see you will see more of that happening in the future” (Goldwasser).

Eliad Goldwasser’s children are learning to be advanced problem solvers by using the same method he uses at work. In the long term, children being taught these methods early on will really help bring the world to be a better, more efficient place.

SAP Design Head Quarters Palo Alto

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WORKS CITED Goldwasser, Eliad. Personal Interview. 7 March 2018 Raj, Navdeep. Personal Interview. March 2018 Goldwasser, Eliad. Personal Interview. March 2018 Kumar, Janaki. Personal Interview. April 2018 “Design-Led Development Process.” SAP User Experience Community, experience.sap.com/ fiori-design-web/design-led-development-processexternal/.

“SAP Design.” SAP Design, design.sap.com/.

“SAP Fiori | User Experience and Apps.” SAP, www. sap.com/products/fiori.html.

“How to Kick Off a Crash Course.” Stanford D.school, dschool.stanford.edu/resources/gear-uphow-to-kick-off-a-crash-course.

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Author Bio

Joseph Watson is a Junior at Mountain View High School, who also attends Freestyle Academy where he studies film. He is 16 years old, and has lived in California for four years. Being from Minnesota, Joseph enjoys playing hockey whenever he can as well as the majority of other winter activities. Joseph is looking forward to his senior year at Freestyle.

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