In this article, we are going to talk about User eXperience a little more.
What is UX ?
Traditionally people are confused with what is user experience and what is the difference between User Interface (UI) and User eXperience (UX).
There are a lot of differences between UI and UX since UX is a very broad concept and it is not only design or the way the interface looks like.
Google definition of UX: “The overall experience of a person using a product such as a website or computer application, especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is to use”.
The key point Google is mentioning here is Usability.
UX is the usability of one solution but keeping in mind its specific customer.
So when you are a UX developer, you are both a UX designer and a developer, since you are going to develop the solution based on your initial design, focusing on the usability and your customer needs.
What is a Persona ?
The first step of going towards any UX design is to find out your customers, your Personas.
So what is a Persona ? Persona is a personification of your real customer, who is going to use your application.
Generally, what we do when we go to a UX workshop is to know more about our customer users, the ones who are going to use our solution and see what is their specific age group, their thinking pattern, their working condition, their priorities, lifestyles and physical attributes.
This helps a lot while designing the solution because you can keep in mind your customer needs and goals.
So that’s the Persona.
In the second part of this article we will be talking about the Wire Framing phase and the tools you can use.
Before starting the project we should know why we selected both Arduino and Raspberry Pi .
SAP HANA IoT Project – why Raspberry Pi and Arduino ?
The Raspberry Pi is a low-cost credit-card-size computer with an ARM-processor that has a huge community to help to build applications.
Raspberry Pi can multitask processes – it can run multiple programs in the background while activated. For example, you can have a Raspberry Pi that is serving as both a print server and a VPN server, at the same time.
Arduino is a micro-controller with easier capability to integrate analog input,
The Arduino IDE is significantly easier to use than Linux.
For example, if you wanted to write a program to blink a LED with Raspberry Pi, you’d need to install an operating system and some code libraries – and that’s just to start. Whereas, with Arduino, you can get a LED light to blink in just eight lines of code.
Arduino isn’t designed to run an OS or a lot of software, you can just plug it in and get started.
You can leave an Arduino plugged in as it conducts a single process for a long time, and just unplug it when you’re not using it. This is why we recommend the Arduino for beginners before going for Pi.
As per Limor Fried, the founder of Adafruit, a DIY electronics store that offers parts and kits for both Arduino and Pi projects, “The Arduino is simpler, harder to ‘break’ or ‘damage’ and has much more learning resources at this time for beginners, With the Pi you have to learn some Linux as well as programming—such as Python. The Arduino works with any computer and can run off of a battery. You can also turn it on and off safely at any time. The Pi setup can be damaged by unplugging it without a proper shutdown.”
While the Raspberry Pi shines in software application, the Arduino makes hardware projects very simple. It’s simply a matter of figuring out what you want to do.
Sound like Raspberry Pi is superior to Arduino, but that’s only when it comes to software applications. Arduino’s simplicity makes it a much better bet for pure hardware projects.
The ultimate answer when deciding between the Pi and Arduino is, “Why choose?”
If you’re looking to learn about IoT, each one will teach you something different.
Raspberry Pi and Arduino are complementary. Ideally expert suggests a scenario where the Arduino is the sensory workhouse, while the Pi doles out directions.
Our SAP HANA IoT Project Steps
So we are going to do exactly that, in this article series we are going to use:
Arduino for analog interface
and providing data in digital format to Raspberry Pi
and Pi should take care of communication to SAP HANA.
Simplified steps are :
Step 1: Connect Arduino to a Computer and checking if the analog input is working perfectly. For this experiment, we have photosensors that will detect light intensity and give the data to a computer by serial port communication, through Arduino.
Step 2. Connect Raspberry Pi to Arduino and able to establish the same configuration which was achieved via computer and Arduino. Also setting up a webserver in Raspberry Pi which can communicate over internet.
Step 3: Storing data into the SAP HANA system from Pi and displaying it using SAPUI5 in near real time.
Today, in this article, we are going to see what is SAP’s new User Experience (UX).
But before going into more detail, there is a question:
Why has SAP introduced this new User eXperience in UI which is so much different from the traditional way of working?
The answer is simple: from past few years, people are using iPhones, tablets, doing more eShopping, using Twitter, Facebook and other social media applications to collaborate and share and this has raised consumer expectation of what interaction should be like and provided SAP to get a good opportunity to transform its 20 year-old UI design into a new look.
SAP New UX 5 Key Principles
If you take a deep look into this new User eXperience, there are 5 Key Principles that should be followed:
Keeping it simple – the application should be created for one user type with one use case and covered within three different navigations screens.
Role-Based – so that the same application can be used by many individual users at a different level, at the same time.
The application should provide Instant Value – which means the users can directly see the advantage, so they can go for the adoption.
There should be coherency for all the application, no matter the function domain.
The applicaiton should run in all devices, should be Responsive.
Application Categories
To bring this to the customer landscape within an existing business process, SAP has characterized applications in 3 different ways or categories:
New Applications – These applications are very innovative, totally new and many of them are native. New functionality and new skin.
Renew Applications – These applications are also out of the box and mainly for a wider audience, for example, the existing VA03 Sales Order transaction. The same funcionality but with a different skin.
Enablement Toolkits – There are many business processes which are specific to the customers for their own specific businesses. For these specific scenarios, there are technologies and frameworks like Floor Plan Manager, Script Persona or our Javascript library from SAP, called SAPUI5, that will help doing the mapping and fill the business gaps.
It all started four months back when my friend call me regarding some new development which he was doing with SAP UI5. He told me that he had learned UI5 and HANA from open SAP and he was now building a small application.
He got the code available in the internet but was having some confusion regarding a few components, as he was getting an error message. We checked the code for a while and found there was a data binding which was missing and once we fixed that, and some other small issues, we were able to make the app work. He was very excited as his first app was working 🙂
After 2 weeks, he pinged me because he got into a project and was going for customer workshop for requirement gathering and was bit worried, as working with this new technology from SAP is not that simple and he was also not having real time project experience.
We spent 1 hour in a call where we discussed about the UX, information architecture, personas, wireframing and prototyping tools from SAP.
He seems to be quite relaxed now as he has now been told what will happen and what he has to do. Again after 3 weeks, I got a call that the user workshop was done and the customer liked the new design and the way workshop was conducted, focusing on business rather than technology. He requested a short video on the topic, which we discussed on the call for his friends.
The Video Course
After a while guess my luck !!!
People got more interested on my videos and they wanted me to record more.
One thing lead to another and we formed a small group of people called UI5 Community which shares learning material and real project experiences.
Now, after lots of request from people outside of my organization, we decided to compile all content and present it in three series, so many people can benefit from it.
