SAP Visual Design – Changes Coming

Since the launch of the first release of SAP, the visual design of SAP products has gone through several changes and re-design. From the 1970′s until early 1990′s, graphic design was not so much considered in SAP products – functionality always is the prime focus. At those “early days”, the look and feel and usability of SAP software was influenced by the dominant operating system – OSF/Motif and Microsoft Windows. The first SAP re-design was in 1998 with the Enjoy design theme. This theme was now more focused on rich color, texture and dimensionality, with minor details took care at extreme. This was a major breakthrough by SAP, making it’s software instantly recognizable until these days. Comparing to other vendors, SAP achieved higher rates in terms of user friendliness and usability, putting SAP in a leadership position in visual design for business software.

Following the Enjoy theme design for GUI, SAP then focused in the web design strategy. With the rising of SAP Portals, SAP products harmonized on a lighter, cleaner and straightforward design theme called Tradeshow.

Evolution of Design Themes

The figures below show the same transaction in several visual design themes:

Figure 1 – SAP GUI for Microsoft Windows Theme

Figure 2 – SAP GUI in the Enjoy Theme

Figure 3 – SAP GUI in the Tradeshow Theme

Applying different themes doesn’t change the functionality of the transaction. The core application remains the same. So when creating new themes, there are a set of rules and several aspects to take care, since once a theme is officially deployed, it can be used my millions of users in the world.

The New Signature Design Theme

The third revolution in visual design at SAP is the new Signature design theme. A special SAP team located in Waldorf, Germany, has worked hard on this new theme, from 2007 until the end of 2008 and to deliver the latest design theme for SAP applications.  It may sound a long time to deliver a new design theme, but remember that this new visual appearance has to comply with several SAP applications and will cover millions of UI’s in the world.

Figure 4 – Example of the Signature design, SAP Business ByDesign screen running in the SAP NetWeaver Business Client

Figure 5 – The same transaction shown in figures 1-3 running in the Signature Theme

SAP’s Design Guild summarizes with:

With ten design patents pending for the Signature design and loads of positive feedback from customers, the SAP User Experience – Visual Design team is exceedingly proud of this new design and will be evolving it for quite a few years to come. That is, until we start the next revolution.

Article based on official SAP information.

Additional links and resources

• The signature design under microscope
• Visual Design for Business Software
• SAP visual design vision, mission and strategy