The Ergonomic User Interface
Every Monday morning I hop on a plane, arrive at my destination city, pick up a rental car, and drive to my client’s site. The car rental company gives me a different make and model car every week. And yet, somehow, I am successfully able to open the car, adjust the seat and mirrors, start the car, shift gears, and drive. I can also operate the radio, air conditioning, heat, windshield wipers, and headlights.
Now, put me behind a keyboard in front of a computer application which I have never seen before. My user experience is all over the map – somewhere in the continuum between most excellent and very poor. Some application user interfaces are extremely intuitive, well-designed and easy to navigate, logically follow the business process flow, and provide real meaningful help when needed. Other application user interfaces are extremely difficult to navigate, are not intuitive, do not follow a logical business process flow, and offer little or no meaningful help. And sometimes in these difficult user interfaces, not only has the location of the steering wheel been moved to a totally unsuspecting location, but its appearance has been changed so that, even when I see it, I do not even recognize it as being the application’s steering wheel.
A well-engineered user interface is no accident. It doesn’t just magically happen. It must be woven into the fabric of the design and the code; and it should never be shoe-horned into the application as an after-thought. It takes a lot of up front planning, designing, testing, functional effort and technical effort to produce a really good application user interface. And yes, designing, building, testing, and implementing a good user interface for your application will extend the delivery time of whatever it is that you are building.
Why is a well-designed and ergonomic user interface so important? You could have built the best application ever developed. But if it is unusable, it will never get very far. Countless hours are lost every day as thousands of frustrated users spend extra time and effort wrestling with poorly designed user interfaces, rather than focusing on their jobs. And when the frustration levels reach a certain trigger point, the users will seek out and find alternative ways to perform their duties.
Here are a few examples of some very interesting user interface experiences that I have personally encountered.
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DataXstream Can Integrate Anything To SAP – Even A Toaster!
Why would you integrate a toaster with SAP?
SAP integration is our specialty. We figure that if we can integrate SAP to a toaster, we can integrate SAP to anything! From shop floor-automation, warehouse automation, accounts receivable, human resource management systems and, well, toasters, DataXstream is the leader in SAP integration.
How do you integrate a toaster with SAP?
How did we integrate SAP to a toaster? First, we created a custom ABAP application on our SAP R/3 4.7 Enterprise application server. This custom program calls a RFC on our SAP Netweaver Exchange Infrastructure 3.0 (XI) server. The XI server converts the RFC call into a web service XML message. The web service message is sent to a custom web service application implemented on Microsoft IIS 6.0. The web service application receives the XML message and uses a .NET DLL to communicate with a programable logic contrller (PLC) server. The PLC server communicates with a PLC that controls a stepper motor. The stepper motor is attached to the handle of the toaster. The handle is lowered to start the toaster and raised when the appropriate amount of time has elapsed. In addition to the SAP integration, DataXstream resources handled every step of the process including .NET programming and hardware fabrication.
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Video of DataXstream Toaster Integration With SAP
SAP Interface Design
By: Timothy Yates
Description:
While there are many different ways to approach SAP system integration design, there is no right or wrong way necessarily, but success usually lies in the attention to details. The following document outlines a possible approach to an SAP integration project. Previous integration knowledge in a particular functional area is beneficial however overall integration experience is more critical. The more hours spent in general on SAP integration the better. Integration technology is continuously changing and adapting therefore continuous learning and training is required to be effective at integration design.
