Why Design Thinking and Agile Go Together
What Kitesurfing Teaches You About Design Thinking
Impact Week is a non-profit program which unites people from a variety of countries to develop sustainable business models using Design Thinking. The organization is rapidly growing around the globe, from one location in 2015 to eight in 2019. This growth can both be challenging and inspiring. Here are some insights into the experiences SAP colleagues made while volunteering for Impact Week in 2018, and a first glimpse at the program for 2019.
At this year’s SAP UX Day in Karlsruhe, Germany, more than forty people attended a Design Thinking workshop of a different kind. It did not address customers’ endeavors on how to best digitalize their business or on how to innovate by introducing intelligent solutions. This workshop conveyed Design Thinking methods on how to improve people’s lives – their own private lives.
Impact Week, a non-profit intercultural Design Thinking program, was recognized as one of 100 “Excellent Places in the Land of Ideas”. Sponsored by the German initiative “Germany — Land of Ideas”, the prestigious award goes to projects that connect worlds and strengthen solidarity. SAP Design experts volunteered as Design Thinking coaches, contributing their expertise in Kigali, Rwanda and Bogota, Colombia.
Societal developments and the digital era require key players to constantly evolve and stay innovative. In 2017, Rolls-Royce’s business unit Power Systems therefore started collaborating with SAP to introduce design thinking in their company. The set goal: transforming the innovation culture at Rolls-Royce Power Systems. What began as a UX topic in IT, turned into an organization-wide new mindset change.
Only by understanding the true needs of our end users and customers, can we think of ways to solve their pain points and help them to overcome challenges. Try out a set of exercises to increase empathy through listening.
On June 8, the SAP AppHaus Heidelberg hosted its fifth annual Open House Day. For the first time, the AppHaus joined the Uncover DesignFest, offering an inside view of a unique space where design meets business. Located in Heidelberg’s historic Landfried tobacco factory, the SAP AppHaus captured a diverse group of visitors with its compelling atmosphere and distinctive, […]
Design Thinking has become a widely used approach to foster innovation and creativity, often acting as catalyst for change and growth both on an organizational and personal level. Good reasons for SAP Design to support the Impact Weeks in Rwanda and Colombia, a two-week Design Thinking program.
How can organizations go beyond spending money in a financial capacity and create real impact? A central question to nonprofit efforts, this is how Heather Hooper, Director of the Sharks Foundation (the charitable arm of the San Jose Sharks professional ice hockey team), opened a design thinking workshop with SAP North America’s Corporate Social Responsibility […]
Digital assistants, intelligent enterprise and machine learning – dive deep into some of the most important technology tends at ASUG Annual Conference in Orlando on Monday, June 4, 2018. Reserve your seat soon.
The importance of empathy – in recent years, a strong shift towards customer-centricity has occurred in all areas of business. This development has also affected IT: Today, programming lives from the ability to not only write good code but to understand customers and develop solutions that satisfy their needs and expectations. Putting the end-user in […]
It is no surprise that visual aids help convey ideas more concisely and accurately. For anyone who is looking to maximize his/her solution ideating and prototyping session, can be an excellent tool and icebreaker during any Design Thinking workshop that can create intensive but creative ideation. It became clear to the employers at Tokyo Electric […]
It is impossible to ignore how technology is changing how we live. In our homes with intelligent appliances and digital assistants; during our commutes with on-demand transportation and ride-sharing; and on the go with mobile and cloud services. But what will the confluence of machine intelligence, enterprise mobility, and cloud-based services mean for the enterprise? […]
Chinese delegation visited the SAP Design team at the SAP AppHaus in Heidelberg to learn more about design and innovation after having travelled to Hannover Messe
Leonardo is SAP’s vision for the future of work, and at its very heart lies design and design thinking.
As companies begin their digital transformation journey, they need to do much more than look for innovative technologies. They also need to create an innovation culture that will pave the way to easier adoption of these new technologies. To do so, SAP advocates Design Thinking – a mindset that provides employees with an inviting environment […]
Bill Roske took one 3-day d.camp and found himself leading 400 students in a Design Thinking workshop.
In this series of four articles, I would like to describe ten workshop principles that have become essential for me, based on well over 200 shorter and longer formats, which I have designed and implemented in the last few years for a wide range of topics, challenges, participant groups and (business) contexts.
In this small series of four articles, I would like to describe ten workshop principles that have become essential for me, based on well over 200 shorter and longer formats, which I have designed and implemented in the last few years for a wide range of topics, challenges, participant groups and (business) contexts.
In this small series of four articles, I would like to describe ten workshop principles that have become essential for me, based on well over 200 shorter and longer formats, which I have designed and implemented in the last few years for a wide range of topics, challenges, participant groups and (business) contexts.
In the following, I would like to describe ten workshop principles that have become essential for me, based on well over 200 shorter and longer formats, which I have designed and implemented in the last few years for a wide range of topics, challenges, participant groups and (business) contexts.
Warm-ups and ice breakers are the perfect tools to access creativity and unlock innovation. After observing the impact they have on groups at design thinking workshops, the AppHaus decided to host a meetup to introduce others to the value behind fun, yet strategic, pre-workshop activities.
SAP’s expert design team regularly hosts design thinking workshops with internal stakeholders and customers across various industries, their goal being to drive business outcomes by reframing problems and focusing on user experience. But what does that entail?
Become a UX champion to lead design transformation within your organization. Learn how to apply design thinking to accelerate and transform the user experience for your business users. Register for this session moderated by design thinking practitioners from SAP and our Customers like John Hopkins and Moen, UX champions. listed to a highly interactive session with customers who have been through this journey, supported by SAP experts.
Successful design-driven companies go beyond using design as a service, and see it instead as a catalyst for culture change and as a tool to drive business strategy and innovation. However, they do not get there overnight. Creating a culture of design-led innovation is a journey that takes time and commitment. From our experience at […]
Are augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) just a few more buzzwords or will those become real trends in a world where IoT and Industry 4.0 are increasingly important? According to Augmented/Virtual Reality Report 2016 by Digi-Capital1, $686 million were inested in AR/VR in 2015. By 2020, this number is expected to grow towards $120 billion2. Therefore, […]
We like to think of innovation as being at the confluence of technical feasibility, business viability and human values. However, while most organizations possess the business knowledge and technical skills to execute and produce incremental innovations, we’ve learned through our work that many still lack the human component. That is the value of design: it […]
The Design Thinking process first defines the problem and then implements the solutions, always with the needs of the user demographic at the core of concept development. – Stanford d.school Design thinking is key to putting the customer at the center of everything your company does. Unfortunately not everyone has had the opportunity to take […]
Large enterprises are facing a faster changing business environment: innovation cycles are getting shorter, markets are being disrupted through digitization, new business models evolve, the “new generation” wants to be led differently, and working models are being revolutionized. A people-centric approach is a key differentiator for companies that want to be and stay relevant in […]
Daimler AG drives change in innovation and agile working culture and therefore implements Design Thinking in its organization. Daimler has chosen SAP as a partner for their Design Thinking enablement because SAP went on a similar journey and thus Daimler can benefit from SAP’s learnings.
More than 40 Bitkom members participated in a design-thinking workshop orchestrated by the Design & Co-Innovation Center (DCC) at AppHaus Heidelberg. The goal of the one-day workshop was to provide insights into design thinking methodologies and demonstrate how a design-led innovation approach can address cognitive computing challenges. Bitkom, Germany´s digital association, offers a variety of […]
This year, SAP has received 18 design award recognitions from some of the most prestigious organizations in the world. That's a big deal - and not only for SAP.
Can something so seemingly simple — so ostensibly obvious — really be so revolutionary?
Well, it is hard to argue with the core principles.
With the rise of design thinking, the way we do, think and define design is changing, bringing with it new questions.
Design thinking is not just a big joke…or is it? I wondered about this recently when I attended a sketch comedy writing workshop led by our very own talented intern Bradley Naumann.
An intern describes a unique characteristic of the DCC team.
Startups are embracing design thinking and setting themselves up to succeed.
As Chief Design Officer, Sam Yen represents design and user experience at SAP. Find out what Sam enjoys about his job as well as some of the challenges he faces.
Time pressure, tasked divided up into sequential processes and handed off from one role to another, teams scattered around the globe (or even “just” in different buildings), abstract artifacts sent back and forth by email… a combination of many or all of these factors is often the reality in software development projects in large organizations. […]
On April 15th the European Design at Business Community met the first time in 2016. Hosted by Philips in Eindhoven the Design Thinking experts took the chance of an exchange at eye level on “Prototyping new Realities”.
As head of design at IBM, Phil Gilbert leads a program of historic proportions to reinvigorate IBM’s business through the power of Design Thinking. Since his company was acquired by IBM in 2010, Gilbert has been executing on his plan to redefine how Big Blue, the inventor of commercial computing, develops its products and services. […]
Building up a culture of sustainable design at a behemoth like IBM is a big job, but not too big for Phil Gilbert.
During the last two years in my role as a design thinking coach at SAP, I experienced the power of analogies in various design thinking (DT) projects. Again and again, I was impressed by how analogies brought inspiration and value to any DT challenge the team faced. Analogies create understanding, inspiration, and identification in project […]
Try it here on April 28th! Starting with a new visual design, easier low fidelity prototype creation, we put in this release features that our users asked for: form factor and browser (Firefox, IE11) support for User Studies, a new discussion thread when prototyping, an icon picker, Fiori Smart Templates… What’s new and exciting […]
The winners of the 2015 SAP Gründerwerkstatt, a workshop for startup entrepreneurs, were recently invited to the SAP AppHaus in Heidelberg for an interview. Their “Back on Track” project had just garnered another accolade in winning the Google Impact Challenge, which followed a second-place finish in ECHT GUT!, an award the German state of Baden-Württemberg […]
“There is, perhaps, no college decision that is more thought-provoking, gut wrenching and rest-of-your-life oriented—or disoriented—than the choice of a major.” (Eric St. John, 2000) Abby is a senior at the University of Kentucky. In a few months, she will graduate with a major in Integrated Communication Studies (ICS) and transition into a full time […]
Prof. Dr. Gesche Joost on Design, SAP, IoT, and why Germany is lagging behind its EU neighbors in the digital transformation.
The design of a service or product decides about its success or failure, this is what really makes the difference for successful enterprises. The goal is to deliver business value with design.
Check out 10 customer stories from AMG, China Grand Auto, Coca Cola Hellenic, eBay, Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane, Heidelberg University Hospital, National Center of Tumor Diseases (NCT), National Hockey League (NHL), Siemens, and State of Indiana.
"Scenes" is a tool and a method that was created to empower business leaders and professionals of all industries to shape their ideas and scenarios in the form of fun illustrative storyboards without the need of refined drawing skills. Learn how you can use it.
I keep a sailboat in Sausalito, a picturesque town that has more charm than commerce. In May, I was enjoying a glass of wine on the boat of a friend who was all worked up about the new ferry landing that the Golden Gate Bridge District wanted to install in Sausalito. “It’s horrible. It’s huge, […]
A phenomenal number of people in the world are affected by cancer, whether individuals battling the disease, their family and friends, or the medical specialists researching cures and treating patients. That’s why I’m humbled and grateful to be associated with the SAP Medical Research Insights solution, powered by SAP HANA, which recently won the highly regarded Red Dot Award for […]
The EBS Alumni Network is the alumni organization of the private EBS University (Wiesbaden/Oestrich-Winkel) with over 3,400 members in more than 30 countries. Since its inception in 1971, the EBS Alumni Community has evolved to one of the biggest promoters of the EBS with a cumulative financing volume of several million euros. With the EBS […]
In late November, about 140 early talents from all over Germany gathered at the Rhein-Neckar Arena in Sinsheim, close to SAP’s headquarters in Walldorf, to experience SAP – the company they have joined during the last two years – as part of the P&I Early Talents develop&&impact Program. On day one, Sibylle Barz (P&I ET […]
There’s a digital disruption happening, and as an IT industry, we need to be aware of it and start to prepare. There are changes to come, but many are happening already, and it’s important that we take a leadership role during this period of rapid change. That begins by becoming innovation partners to business and […]
I’m very pleased to bring you the seventh in my series of interviews with SAP employees in a variety of roles in the area of user experience and design. About Beate Beate Riefer is a design thinking coach with SAP’s Design and Co-Innovation Center in Heidelberg, Germany. Beate started working at SAP in 2010 as a user experience designer and […]
Learn more about how SAP and the Heidelberg University Hospital joined forces to significantly accelerate and simplify cervical cancer screening in fragile infrastructures, starting in Kenya, powered by SAP HANA Cloud Platform.
The world of soccer has long since opened up to the power of technological advances. TSG 1899 Hoffenheim a German Bundesliga club has developed a reputation as a leading innovator. Buoyed by the popularity that the “Footbonaut” ‒ a training machine for sharpening ball-control and response skills ‒ enjoyed among its coaches and players, the […]
From January to September 2015 approximately 65,000 refugees requested asylum in the German state of Baden-Württemberg (where Walldorf and Heidelberg are both located) but the total number of refugees in the state is even higher as many are not yet registered (https://www.lpb-bw.de/fluechtlinge_baden_wuerttemberg.html). By end of the year, the state of Baden-Württemberg expects to receive close […]
With management consultants and industry experts promising to solve challenges facing organizations, how could design thinking be used to tackle strategic issues facing large and small companies?
After a bit of a summer break, I’m happy to bring you the sixth in my series of interviews with SAP employees in a variety of roles in the area of user experience and design. About Tobias Tobias Hildenbrand, Development Project Expert, acts as an internal consultant and global lead for business model innovation […]
Let me share the story of my latest Design Thinking experience with you. I admit it was not a perfect project, still I loved working on it. Looking back, I identified 7 mistakes I as a DT coach and we as a DT team made. And exactly these mistakes push me toward doing it again…
From my experience as a designer at SAP's Design & Co-Innovation Center, one common issue we face during our design research is the (mis)understanding of roles–the expert and a typical end user. While these roles have a lot of overlap, they are not interchangeable.
Designers are familiar with different types of prototyping across user experience and product design. Prototyping is a key element of the Design Thinking process, and also of great value for communication, as IDEO founder and Stanford d.school professor David Kelley explains: “If a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth a million […]
Never give up! Design Thinking is all about wild ideas - and this also applies to us as coaches as well: so, if you don't have a whiteboard to do the clustering, simply take a bus!
On September 2, 2015 the “Your City, Your Ideas – New Heroes in Rhine-Neckar” competition officially kicked off in the SAP AppHaus Heidelberg. In this competition, the crowdfunding platform SPONSORT has joined forces with the SAP Design & Co-Innovation Center, Volksbank Kurpfalz, and the cities of Heidelberg, Ludwigshafen, and Mannheim to search for people with […]
My name is Mauro Rego and I am working as a designer at SAP´s Design & Co-Innovation Center (DCC). I design experiences of new digital products and services for business through storytelling and games. Over the last years, I have witnessed the rise of in-house trainings related to design. Thanks to Design Thinking and the presence […]
I had the great honor of interviewing Johanna Welz (18) and Viola Benecke (17), the two young women who joined SAP´s Design & Co-Innovation Center (DCC), based in the AppHaus in Heidelberg, for one month as interns. Johanna just having graduated and Viola still a continuing student are on their way to find out what […]
The SAP Design & Co-Innovation Center (DCC) has a mission: to make design a priority at SAP. “SAP is not perceived as being a leader in design,” explains Matthias Langholz, Strategic Design Consultant at the DCC. “In fact, quite the contrary. Our main aim is to change this with interesting design projects that show that […]
Europe’s largest competition to find the leaders of tomorrow is a joint initiative of Bertelsmann, E.ON, McKinsey & Company, Porsche, and SAP as well as manager magazin, n-tv, Spiegel Online and the career network e-fellows.net as media partners. This year’s finalists have acquired an essential skill for their future positions: Design Thinking. And SAP has […]
How can Design Thinking help talented students from Bulgaria? How can you boost creativity in 4 hours? What do summer camp scientific research projects have to do with prototyping mobile applications?
Ms. Theresia Bauer – Minister of Science, Research and the Arts for the State of Baden-Württemberg – visited AppHaus Heidelberg on July 29, 2015, together with several representatives of her ministry, the Ministry of State, the City of Heidelberg, and members of her Greens party. It was important for her to find out more about […]
This is the second post in a two-part interview series about changing software development culture from one focused mainly on features and functions toward one that invests meaningful and appropriate resources on user experience and design. When teams and management are asked to change the way they have always done things, that is when things […]
Putting user experience (UX) at the forefront of what IT does and using the principles of design thinking requires digging to the root of what users are actually trying to accomplish and what motivates them. This invariably paints a very different picture than making educated assumptions or just asking users for feature requirements. Getting to […]
You probably wonder how improving User Experience relates to rethinking IT? There are some fundamental changes happening in how software is being developed. Having been in IT for many years before coming to SAP, I can clearly see these changes happening on both sides: at SAP and now also in our customer base. To illustrate, […]
When you participate in the dual studies programme from SAP, you enjoy a combination of a practice-oriented, theoretical university course of study with practical application of what you have learned in everyday work. But you do not always experience such a special internship as I did in the Design & Co-Innovation Center (DCC) from SAP, which is based at the SAP AppHaus in Heidelberg.
Some of our UX and Design leadership team members, under Sam Yen, are addressing these ideas and providing perspectives, insight and inspiration through a series of blog published on SAP Business Trends.
Everyone likes attractive, comfortable surroundings, but to what extent do the spaces in which we work affect how we work? The answer, a lot! As Director of AppHaus Enablement at SAP, I have personally witnessed the amazing transformative power of how changes to furniture, lighting, sound proofing, and floor space layout encourage creativity and collaboration […]
XX+UX is an event for women (XX) in the field of User Experiences (UX) to meet and mingle. This event is organized by Google and hosted by different companies at locations worldwide. The January 2015 event is hosted by SAP’s Design and Co-Innovation Center (DCC) in Palo Alto, California, where many talented XXs create magical UX for enterprise software users.
I’ve spoken with many CIOs recently, and it’s fair to say the role is changing. Not long ago, it was fine for them to dedicate about 80% of their time to optimizing and ensuring the uptime of key business systems, and for the remainder, to peer over the horizon at what was ahead for the […]
Design Thinking has a strong history at SAP that started in 2004 and continues today. Here is the Design Thinking journey! Watch the video and let us know your thoughts! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvu5mgocfjgVideo can’t be loaded: History of Design Thinking with SAP (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvu5mgocfjg) Visit the Design Thinking page on sap.com and follow on twitter @DTwithSAP to learn more.
Over the past 10 years SAP has successfully introduced and established great methods for development teams to faster and better design and develop products. Lean software development, agile software engineering and design thinking all successfully help us to deliver great software solutions for our customers and drive innovation. In part 1 of this two-part article […]
In part 1 of this article, I summarized the background and basics of agile user experience (UX). In this follow-up article, I’d like to move away from the theory and tell you more about my practical and personal experiences working with these methods. With the rise of agile and lean approaches across our industry, UX […]
In today’s customer-driven world, the consumer’s voice is one of the most important ingredients in technology design that dazzles with brilliant simplicity. Whether people are at home or work, their experience with software has to align with how they work and what they do.
At the Design & Co-Innovation Center (DCC) at SAP, our team members have facilitated a number of workshops, especially Design Thinking (DT) Workshops. We learned that preparing and presenting the workshop content is only half of what is required to deliver a successful workshop. The other half is managing different types of participants to make […]
When you think of a Design Thinking workshop, you probably envision a group of people working together to solve one particular problem. However, last week, the Design & Co-Innovation Center from SAP took a whole new approach by bringing together three organizations with vastly different goals to collaborate and learn from each other. I had the […]
Prototyping for empathy is a method that is used by the d.School in order to immerse one you in the situation of your client, user, etc.
Business Origami is a method that has been invented by the Hitachi Design Center. It uses paper cut-outs as symbolic representations of people, groups, channels and environments, to create a miniature model of a system.
The hero’s journey is a storytelling method introduced by Joseph Campbell who analyzed vast numbers of myths and fairy tales. He found that all heroes follow a journey with 12 distinct steps, although not all 12 are mandatory for the story.
An experience map is a method you can use to get insights into the holistic experience of your target group (be it users, customers, clients) in order to understand and visualize the ups and downs of their experience across the service or ecosystem.
What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the words “Design Thinking?” You probably think that these words are related to designers or the design industry, right? Well, you’re right… but only partially. After all, the person who coined this “problem-solving methodology” is none other than David Kelley, the founder of […]
It’s the end of the week. A few interaction designers, some software engineers, a handful of consultants, and more slowly trickle out the door, with bags on their backs and weekend plans on their mind. The lights click off around SAP’s Palo Alto campus, and each of the nine buildings softly settles into its weekend […]
Collaborative Sketching is a creative method that builds on the ideas of others in order to create a shared vision for a product or experience.
For the past six months, I have been working as an intern in Marketing & Communications at the Design & Co-Innovation Center (DCC) based at the SAP AppHaus Heidelberg, Germany. The extraordinary environment and the passionate, committed team have made this internship a great experience. There is something special about the AppHaus, inspired by the […]
As a unit with distributed teams working in a Design Thinking mode, we needed to find a way to work collaboratively and creatively together, although not being in one location and time zone. And we found a solution: the Tele-Board!
Last weekend I had the pleasure to host the third DTCamp in the SAP AppHaus in Heidelberg. On two days 40 design thinkers from all around Germany discussed topics around design thinking, innovation culture, change management, startups, failing – and of course also soccer (as we watched together the game between Germany and France – […]
Stepping out of the mid-day Bay Area heat and into the open, tailored space, we crowd around Doctor Alan Schroeder, Director of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. Smiling nurses, wearing red cloth shirts with flower pins, calmly navigate our surrounding area. As Dr. Schroeder welcomes us to the medical center, many of us eagerly tip […]
What happens if you bring together 10 founders, 50 team members, 10 coaches, 5 experts and one moderator in an inspiring location? Well, we tried it out during the "Gründerwerkstatt für Sozialunternehmertum" in the AppHaus in Heidelberg.
Learn about Charetting, a great technique that helps a project team reframe a problem statement or a design challenge.
On June 3, 2014, to celebrate the second German Diversity Day, the city of Heidelberg, in collaboration with the Intercultural Center Heidelberg, SAP, the SAP AppHaus, and Neue deutsche Medienmacher hosted a diversity event at the Landfried complex and transformed the former tobacco factory into a think tank. To tie in with the upcoming opening of […]
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