Summary
Sam Yen, Chief Design Officer for SAP, talks to Enterprise UX 2017 about how human-centered design is driving technology and ultimately, change within an organization.
Key Insights
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SAP's legacy user experience involved over 300,000 screens, many decades old, requiring massive redesign efforts.
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Hasso Plattner's early leadership embedded user-focused design thinking in SAP's DNA, which was lost and is now being revived.
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Design thinking involves problem finding before problem solving, a crucial mindset often missing in organizations.
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Executive sponsorship is important but insufficient; grassroots momentum and customer buy-in drive real change.
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Enterprise companies have far fewer designers per developer than consumer tech companies, showing a major talent gap.
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Design thinking methods adopted at SAP are shared with customers who then create their own centers of excellence.
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Technology's purpose should be amplifying human capability, not eliminating humans from the equation, echoing Doug Engelbart's vision.
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Organizational adoption of design thinking requires managing stress and comfort zones to enable exploration and creativity.
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Introducing design artifacts and enforcing design gates in processes is key to stopping bad product shipments in large enterprises.
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Democratizing design education through partnerships with minority-serving institutions can foster diversity in the design profession.
Notable Quotes
"Technology should not aim to replace humans, rather amplify human capabilities."
"If you only execute without creativity, or only have ideas without execution, that's not innovation."
"Most organizations are good at problem solving but need to develop problem finding skills."
"Design thinking is simply doing a little problem finding before problem solving."
"If you ask customers, many have no designers at all – their designer to developer ratio would give a divide by zero error."
"Executive sponsorship is necessary but certainly not enough to create lasting change."
"When people are stressed, they seek comfort first before they're willing to explore new ideas."
"We had to finally stop shipping bad products – that was a huge milestone for SAP's design team."
"Design thinking has reached the heads of nations, influencing how countries transition to a creative economy."
"The D School is great, but you all look the same – we need to democratize and diversify who learns design thinking."
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