Day 41 - SAP (Software Architect Interview)

Today I have another interview at SAP, this time I will be talking with Nils Obermiller who is a development architect in the mobile suite area. In trying to understand the mismatch between what I am looking to learn and the people I have meet I have been thinking more about what it is that I am trying to do. But first there needs to be a bit of clarification. From a meeting I had in New York I think Charles put the finger on it. There is too much talk about User Experience and understanding that it is actually a dedicated area of study which has been around for many years. It is covered in the area of Human Factor Engineering and Human Computer Interaction.


The term UX or user experience often gets confused with terms like interaction design, information architecture, visual design or eye candy, usability engineering and UX design. Since the web and software development has been around these terms often are used as an interchangeable expression with no real understanding of the science and what it is that is being created. 


Information Architecture - As the name says this is about the organisation of data and its structure from a user perspective. This is not system or technical perspective but as a user would use it. This is where the data or content is located for the use of the user. One of the major concerns of information architecture is defining and using taxonomies. That is the information hierarchies and their classification of data within that taxonomies. Navigation and menu structures are an issue for Information Architecture. Understanding the data and its relationships enables a user to logically navigate that data and find the information required in the most efficient way.


Interaction Design - Interaction design is concerned about the controls of a system the mechanics used to interact with a system or application. Should it be menu driven or buttons, there again could tabs be better used. Its all about building the mechanics used to navigate a system so a user understand and identify the control needed to achieve the output required.


Visual Design - This is what some refer to as eye candy, the aesthetics of the interface. That the screen looks good and communicates the right image. Another aspect that it follows brand guide lines. Visual designers often come with a graphic design background with skills in illustration, animation or photography. All these skills integrate into their work and designs. An interesting point to note is good layout is a prerequisite for Good visual design, good interaction design and good information architecture, but each of these specialities use the term layout in ways that are contextual to their specialities. The rationale and goals for each speciality is very different - the visual designer seeks good aesthetics, the interaction designer is looking at workflow, where the Information Architect is looking for good grouping of the information. Sometimes these areas are synergistic, sometimes they're in competition with one another and sometime they're a bit of both. 


Usability Engineering - Usability engineering is about planning and executing various types of usability studies to test how well people actually interact with the user interface and making recommendations for how to correct the problems that these studies identify. These recommendations can be specific like the colour and locations of buttons to general referring to maybe information architecture and recommending that this should be revisited. 


The skill sets that a usability engineer needs are questionnaire design, interviewing, test facilitation and the use of usability testing software and or hardware. These skills are usually the results of formal studies and qualifications. The best usability engineers often have a very strong academic background or may still work mainly in academia.


User Experience Design or UX Designer - This is a culmination of the above skills of which there is clearly a high degree of overlap. So the role of the UX Designer or Architect is that of managing the overlaps and they always do. The skill sets of the UX Designer or Architect needs to be high in information architecture and interaction design. visual and usability engineering is not so necessary. The UX Designer usually produces the wire-frame and generally sets the framework but not the design elements. Like a good project manager they hold the team together to achieve the best results.


From these descriptions of roles and their area of concern you can see how these get confused and mixed up. The other aspect is the business value and at what point you engage in UX Design (User Experience Design). In the past this has been an issue as the terms around this area of expertise and the understanding of its value was never really quantified on a standard interpretation. I am starting to get some real life examples where the science has given great value to the final product. An example that was quoted the other day at Google was a support company had costed the value to reset peoples password to $20 for each interaction. Not much you say but then multiply by 1,000's a month and you start to understand the cost of bad UX (User Experience). In designing an interface which made it simple for a user to reset their password the company saved $1,000's. This was just one example.


What has really brought UX Design to the fore has been the smart phones and tablet/slate computers and the work that Apple has done. People are now realising that things can be done better and you don't always need a manual or an engineering degree to use technology. Talk to anyone who owns an iPad and they will talk about what they do and what they create. The discussion of technology is not part of that conversation. So my research is to understand that point of making technology transparent and enabling people to use technology to assist them in their endeavours and not hinder them.


That user experience goes from the first interaction of obtaining the device to accessing applications or apps to carry out the tasks at hand. Capture and store the necessary data and record or transmit that data to complete the task. So in understanding how this topic is addressed from the different perspectives I hope to better understand how I can and other apply that knowledge for the better out comes of users.


Heading off to SAP now and see if I can better understand their perspective in this question. 


More to come......


Report after interview with Nils Obermiller

Main Lobby at SAP

I meet Nils in the lobby of the head office, from there we headed up to a coffee area. As we were heading up to this area we started to discuss a number of items and I explained my research. When we arrived on the top floor I then switched on the digital recorder. This is material I will need to review later but here are my initial responses.


Nils is a Development Architect, in the Business Suite Architecture Unit. Our discussion covered quite a number of areas, discussing the philosophy be used to develop applications for mobile devices. That development for these types of devices requires a different approach. This approach is focused using user centric design. Instead of design an application that provides functions as in add a name or an address. You design the application to provide a process which could be a culmination of these functions.


We discussed the product that SAP had taken on with the purchase of the Sybase products. Those being Afaria which is a powerful, flexible mobile device management and security solution for the enterprise. Afaria provides a single administrative console to centrally manage, secure, and deploy mobile data, applications and devices.  Afaria powers a wide array of features for device management for both handheld and laptop devices.


The other product that we discussed was SUP - Sybase Unwired Platform. This is a mobile enterprise application platform that enables enterprise developers to simply and quickly develop applications that connect business data to mobile workers on any device. It has been built on proven, industry-leading technology. The Sybase Unwired Platform addresses the difficult mobile challenge of creating and managing multiple mobile applications that securely connect a variety of heterogeneous back-end data sources to all major device types. 


As the enterprise landscape becomes increasingly complex, Sybase Unwired Platform enables enterprises to embrace mobility across the entire organisation through the use of a consistent, but highly adaptable, development platform. 


These two product offer a lot for the development, distribution of mobile applications as well as the management of these devices. After reviewing my recording I will utilise this in my report. My time with Nils was very interesting and quite valuable in the knowledge and details I was able to ascertain. We completed our discussion after an hour and then Nils had to return to his work. He walked me back to the foyer where we saw the exhibition that was being displayed. On enquiry it was a display celebrating 40 years of SAP which was started in 1972.

Project Inspiration - Celebrate 40 Years of the Future

The exhibit covered the past, present and future of SAP. It was interesting to see some of the items and realise I was aware of them and have used them. Ranging from punch cards, floppy disks and one of the first mobile phones.

5.25 inch floppy

The first PC IBM 

First Mobile Phone (The Brick)

DVD 4.5 Gig and VHS Tape

The first iPod of 5 Megs

There were a number surface display unit which with the use of a post card with a barcode on the back would pull up information and video on the display.

Punch cards and systems

Early computing, Commodore 64 on the right there

More advance computers, IBM XT 

Storage and early hard drives

CD's and DVD storage units

Recent memory devices

The other area had Kinetic Display screens which you could interact with a great display of the use of the Microsoft Kinetic and interactive display.

Large interactive display using Microsoft Kinetic

All up the afternoon was well worth the visit and discuss. 


Logging off 6:20pm

Day 32 - Google User Experience Manager

The day started wet, very wet. It had rained all night and still was raining. Initially I did not have any interview but then I received and email from Miles Rochford a User Experience Manager working for Google. Due to a conflict of timings on Thursday our initial meeting was cancelled. Miles indicated he was available today and if I headed into town he was happy to catch up. After receiving instruction on how to get to Victoria Station I was off come rain, hail or hopefully sunshine. Well it was not the type of sunshine I was hoping for, it was liquid format again. Two trains and a walk around the block and I arrived at the home of Google in London. 


I meet Miles on the 5th floor of the building and we proceeded to the canteen to chat. In my rush to get to the appointment I had forgotten my recorder so I am relying on memory and Miles kind offer to stay in touch. We discussed a variety of things from Apple to Microsoft and Google. Some of my discussion that I had, had with these companies as well. Discussing in general my feel and the approach these companies were taking in the areas of User Experience. 


Miles then discussed his background which was interesting to find out that he too was an Australian from Tasmania. He discussed his work before heading to Europe and then his time with Nokia and finally joining Google a year ago. Our discussions covered how companies are starting to change even thought still slowly with some. Finally realising that User Experience is a consideration which can potentially save money. An example was of a company which was having to reset password for their clients. It was calculated that each interaction cost twenty pounds of time, effort and resources. Not much when looking at one or two interactions but when you start to look at thousands and hundred of thousands this can become very expensive. Providing better user experience in being able to retrieve their own passwords and resetting them saved thousands of pounds. 


The discussions covered many aspects of what Google is doing to improve their situation with respect to developers and assisting them to produce applications. Not only providing them Software Development Kits but principles for developing in this space and a many different examples to demonstrate the application of these design principles. The one nugget that I took away from this meeting was the discussion we had about legacy issues faced by all companies and how they handle it. Even Apple who own the total user experience is now having to face this as does Microsoft and other companies. Google too has to handle the situation where the manufacturers trying to create a difference also create issues for developers having to develop for multiple versions. This is similar to the situation with the browser wars in the past.


Hopefully with the new standard of HTML5 this may finally start to settle, but we have to wait and see if Microsoft comes out with a Microsoft HTML5 which will put them back into the same situation as Google with their multiple versions of Android. Fingers crossed and we don't have to go through that experience. 


The issue with Legacy is where in trying to be innovative, that innovation has to be held back due to designed and constraints of the past. The other aspect is backwards compatibility. Microsoft has started to address that and have indicated the IE10 will not be backward compatible. So in some respect they are starting to draw the line. The other part is the user has a set-up of learning experience and to change totally mean that you are creating a new learning curve, with some users that will just frustrate their efforts to carry out their work. Consideration need to be made with the user in mind and the learning experience needs to offer a benefit and savings and not just for the sake of being different or new. 


This is where User Experience really comes to the fore, by applying the knowledge of the user process required to carry out a task, we take advantage of that knowledge and reduce the training. That is based on the interface being intuitive to that process. In discussing this it highlighted some of the examples I have been seeing around the world being used by small business. I saw an example with a food truck. Who remembers everyone crowding around the truck to get your order in and waiting for the food. 1 or 2 people that's fine but what happens when there are 20, 30 or 50. 


When I was at Microsoft in Boston we went around to a local food truck which produced vegetarian food. The interesting part was there were lots of people around but they were all waiting away from the truck. There were two ladies taking orders and money but they were entering the order on an iPhone. Your name and order were entered on the phone and money was handed over. I then noticed two more phones hanging up in the truck where the orders were received in order of them being placed. The food was prepared and the name called out. This was a very simple application using four iPhones and they were serving upto 40 people.


Another example which was in New York. A couple of years ago there were some mates who wanted to go to dinner. When they got to their favourite restaurant they had to put their name on a list. They were informed of a wait of 45-60min and to call back or hang around until they were called. They asked if they could be sms on their mobile, but this was too hard. At that point they came up with the idea of a OpenTable. This is an app which one can take requests at the door and then sms you when your table is ready but now they have to app where you can look up your favourite restaurant look for a vacancy at the time you want, book the table and then turn up. The responsibility being put on the patron but giving them the flexibility.


This is the new para-dime which  Clay Shirky discusses in his book "Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age". Using social media and the generosity of users to supply the service and information to a task that would have cost businesses in the past someone of their staff to do this task. Now the customer manages their time and flexibility and books their own table re-leaving business of that task. Thus freeing them to provide more and better services. 


So in taking a situation which was frustrating for both the patrons and the business. This application now give the user the ability to manage their table bookings and the business to better server the customer just by looking at the user experience as well as taking advantage of the Connected Age.


Tomorrow, well its now today I will be going to Maidstone in Kent to talk with the people responsible for Child Protection and their use of mobile technology and see how they have addressed the issue of usability.


Signing off 1am

Day 25 - Visit to Bentley University

Today was my first interview in Boston. The meeting started at 12 noon before we went to grab some lunch. My meeting today was with Bill Albert, Executive Director of the Design and Usability Center, Bentley University. Bill was a contact that I received from Charles Mauro of New Mauro New Media when I was in New York.

Entry to Bentley University Campus

The initial meeting that I had with Bill was in his office and again I recorded the session. At first I had outlined my background and the work that I was aiming to achieve with the Churchill Fellowship. After that I then turned on the recording to get an understanding of Bill's background and his work in the area of Human Factor Engineering and User Experience. His initial work was in Geography and he was interested in the intersection of Geography and cognitive psychology and came across the field of spacial cognition. 


He spent a lot of time working in this space then began work on navigation systems that  required minimal attention, as in car systems. So a driver can obtain the necessary details without being distracted. After completing his work in this area he stumbled upon the area of usability and found that it aligned quite well to what he had been doing in cognitive psych and human factors. He was also interested in perception, cognition and behaviour and the relationship that goes on in these areas. He then moved into the web in its initial days and learn't a lot in the area of usability and design.


Later moving on to the research side and focused in on the data but looking at the research methods for usability and being able to demonstrate the true business value. Usability has for quite a while been more focused on the qualitative and the area of quantitative research was a field that he worked on with Tom Tullis. Between them they wrote a book called Measuring the User Experience. 

Book Written by Tom Tullis and Bill Albert

Bill works closely and teaches with Tom his work at Bentley is building revenue to the university in the capacity of a consultancy business. Providing services mostly to the fortune 500 companies on all sorts of matters of usability, user experience research helping to advice them on building technology to be easy and intuitive. The other goal is to train graduate students, he is responsible for running one of the largest UX (User Experience) graduate programs in the US and has more that 100 graduate students. A small percentage of those students work in the centre with real clients gaining both experience with real world clients, products and services. For this they receive a small hourly payment as well as the experience and building industry knowledge and networks. 


One of the questions I asked was the difference in designing for tablets to desktop. My assumption to date had lead me to believe there is a difference. But from the UX perspective there is no real difference in the approach and the way that UX specialist work. The difference is more the use of UX and the developers that design systems are not necessarily knowledgeable about this area of work. Many developer make the assumptions based on their experience which does not reflect any understanding of UX and the requirements to delivery on that experience.


Poor information architecture and navigation will always create the same problems no matter what format the system is delivered on.  As Bill pointed out that the emergence of mobile technology for the delivery of these systems has forced the issue and need for proper UX work is needed. The Apple/Google effect has raised the bar and there is less tolerance for bad design. Now that people are experiencing better design products it has raised the bar to what we will accept. 


An interesting example that Bill highlighted was with some work he was involved with Fidelity a usability lab in the mid 90's. They quickly realise or made a connection between usability issues and support costs. They found that people were calling up for various reasons that they might not have called up if they were able to locate the information they required. The realise that every word counts and that there were savings if they designed their site better and made it easier for the client. They found it resulting in savings a real business saving in phone calls.


I then queried at what stage they get involved in projects. Bill indicated that they still get calls from clients about to go to market and wanting to get sign off from a usability perspective. In some cases they are able to add value and also inform the client it would have been better for the project as a whole if they were involved at the start and not the end. In some cases they don't do the work as they are not able to add a demonstrative value to the project. This situation has improved and more and more clients don't really need to understand that this work can produce savings and a return to the business. 


Clients that do leave it to the end usually learn the hard way. But basically the point from the usability aspect is that if the customer can't buy or use your service which can be demonstrated both quantitatively and qualitatively then there is a problem. Usability is no longer a service that needs selling and businesses are starting to understand the value and benefits.


After this discussion we then went on a quick tour of the usability labs that they had. One was a one person arrangement with a computer and screen and a number of cameras around the room, with a second room behind a mirror for the staff carrying out the assessment. The second lab similar in style but designed for multiple users and mobile devices with a digital camera in the ceiling that can focus on the screen in high fidelity quality.


We then went to lunch in the cafeteria, where Bill introduced me to one of his students and a number of other colleges. 


Signing off 10:30pm