Welcome Stakeholders
So what is this Fiori Like Challenge - Well it’s a challenge I gave to myself to highlight how (hopefully) easy it is to take a design thinking (like) approach to developing a new Fiori (like) responsive UI design in a way that can be repeated (to a degree).
Hopefully you didn't miss all the caveats in that last paragraph.
Now I’m no expert in design thinking, though to challenge myself, I’m going to use you as my stakeholders for feedback (jump in any time), but the real empathy I’m going to have is for me as the main stakeholder (may seem a little selfish but hey). Also, another caveat is that I participated in a couple of Innojams around Design Thinking a couple of years ago. The exact steps are lost to me but some of the learning's still resonate with me, so to keep the process aligned, I'm basing my approach off the Stanford Introduction to Design Thinking (Process Guide) that I found in my vault called "Google". It has Hasso Plattner's name on the front so can't be too bad...Feel free to jump in with anything I miss that would help (Hester or Heike???) - It's an iterative process so I can always re-factor my approach.
The Topic
So what is the general topic that I plan to address? Glad you asked (see, I pretended you jumped in there). I’m going to address the fact HR contains all this wonderful information about everyone in the company, and I’m hopeless with names, faces and numbers.
Now why mention Fiori already - well apart from myself wanting to flush out a good design and learn better how to build a SAPUI5 responsive design/Gateway based web application; let’s just say Fiori is a lens we want to place over the problem space (which technically we shouldn’t just yet). Besides, Fiori seems to encompass design thinking, and SAPUI5 responsive design/Gateway based web applications; and will draw SAP consultants to it like moths to light which won’t hurt getting more stakeholders engaged in this set of blogs. And obviously this is Fiori like because it’s not a Fiori product and you hopefully can develop something like this yourself under your existing licenses once you have a Fiori supporting infrastructure in place (which is not an insignificant problem to solve).
Empathise
So let’s get straight to it; time to empathise which requires observation, engagement and understanding why (according to my very brief Design Thinking guide).
This is pretty straightforward since I’m observing myself (feel like I’m in the Matrix); but the hard part is to observe myself in a way that I understand how I tackle this day to day.
The obvious observations:
- Says “G’Day” rather than “Hi <actual name>” - just in case. I mean, what if I pronounce Karin wrong again???!!!
- Before a meeting, he will typically look up the face of someone they haven’t met before through the customer’s portal; including understanding where they fit in the organisation, their role.
- When in a meeting, and he needs to contact someone, it’s usually tricky for him to try get that person’s contact details, especially if the companies address book on his phone is not completely in sync with the HR system.
- When having met someone and they then immediately forget their name, they will attempt to find the person’s face within the people database to try identify who it was they just spoke to.
- They will call up someone and ask - "who was that person we ran into last Spring" when they run into him again (did that yesterday for reference).
There’s plenty more, but that gives you an idea of what I observed of myself over the last 10+ years (I possibly spent a little too long on this step…). I did think about engaging with myself to get me to explain some of this, but thought it was creepy enough observing this guy for 10+ years already.
Define
So what is the problem statement. I may cheat a little here since I clearly know the problem I’m dealing with (be kind and ignore the more obvious personal faults). So let’s start by defining a persona and call him Bob. Bob lives in Tasmania, Australia; working for various companies as an Independent SAP Consultant (this feels a bit like an advertisement right now, but hey - it’s my blog). Day to day, Bob has problems recalling names, and linking new names to faces and even when he does, he sometimes wants to know more about them, even if it is just to give them a call or understand where they sit in the organisation. When he needs this information, he needs it immediately wherever and whenever.
Next Step
Well if you didn't guess - I’m making this up all on the fly so who know if this will become an unfinished symphony or not, but I thought I’d get this first blog out there (albeit quite small) to basically force me to get to the end (kind of like My Fitness Pal but for learning SAP stuff rather than trimming up). No promises how much time I’ll spend doing this or whether I’ll be able to emulate the end to end side completely with all the developer.sap.com resources available to me, but at least I’m already excited to kick off the ideate step in my next blog and to get my lo-fi prototype feedback back from you.
Final note:
In order to try win back my name from a former Chelsea Football VP and he’s associated stand at Stamford Bridge, plus a guy from Seattle who did a "jig" all around the world on youtube, plus numerous other Matt Harding’s out there, I’ve started my micro-brand "Matt Harding" on SCN for my blog titles. Of course, if the SCN weblog feeds just added author names to their feeds I wouldn't need this but till then...
Continued here: Matt Harding’s Fiori Like Challenge - Let's Ideate (e.g. Brainstorm)...(Part 2)
