My Rants and Raves: 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.