SAP’s Design Month 2020 — Beyond UX
When I thought about November, the 1992 Guns N’ Roses hit “November Rain” used to come to my mind. This is a silly side note, but I find it really interesting that ever since I entered SAP, and for the last four years, November has another meaning for the SAP Labs Latin America employees: Design.
It all started during a week, in 2017, which progressed to an entire month of activities in 2019, and for 2020 it couldn’t be different — although facing the virtual-mode challenges, Design Month happened and this year we went Beyond UX.
As with all our plans, we had to go further in order to achieve what we had set up this year. There were doubts and constraints, but we just couldn’t not keep up with the tradition and miss the opportunity to learn and share about something that we’re all passionate about. Because of that, amidst new challenges and after a lot of planning, Design Month — Beyond UX happened.
The Design Month Kick-Off meeting was on November 5th with the SAP UX Frontrunner Lab: Turn end users into co-creators lecture, presented by Ingo Rues and Malin Wittkopf, and this was just the beginning. During the course of the month we had the Design a Chatbot Conversation Virtual Session training, sessions about UX, DT and Inclusive Design awareness, a Design Sprint Crash Course, the Design Eye Opener workshop and the UX Summit as a closing event, these just to name a few.
UX Summit counted with an entire day full of workshops and talks that were led by our great colleagues and ministered by outside speakers as well, after all, the theme for this year’s edition was about all the possibilities and intersections there are when we talk about design and user experience, and to represent such plurality, we were lucky to count on talented and engaging people from and outside SAP.
The design culture at SAP Labs Latin America is being fostered for the last few years in a fast-paced ever-changing environment by many dedicated people, and these efforts are led by the Design Center of Expertise — a group of professionals focused on centering e coordinating the design initiatives here at the Labs.
Now, even though November activities are successfully concluded, and we get the feeling of accomplishment, what really counts and makes the difference in the end are people.
There are concepts and many meaningful quotes that (try to) explain design and what it is all about, but for me, I get the meaning from two things: purpose and people.
Talking about people, Aaron Draplin once said “Do good work for good people”. I guess we can say we really went beyond. We had good people doing and sharing good work, to be delivered to our good people, or as we refer to them in business, customers. As a company, it’s important to stress the importance of using the right tools in order to provide a good experience for our customers during their entire product journey, from development to support.
And so, after almost five weeks of hard work we concluded Design Month 2020 fueled to put in practice all we’ve learned — after all, November is the month to share, but we’ve got the entire year to get to work. Thrilled about what we conquered and eager for what November of 2021 holds.
See you next year!
