Problem
Until recently, end users of business software found themselves frequently constrained by application boundaries when conducting their daily work. The functions and data they needed to accomplish routine tasks often resided in multiple systems, necessitating additional expenditures of effort and time. Thus, a gap is created between how business users work and what development organizations
deliver. Advances in software development, however, now allow for functionality from existing applications to be more readily and easily combined in the creation of new composite applications that better integrate with real world business processes. Within a composite application landscape, parts from disparate business systems can be combined within a unified user interface that is tailored to the specific needs of users and based on the way they work. However, powerful composite application development tools alone do not guarantee a perfect fit with end user needs. Without meaningful user involvement at design time, business applications can become disconnected from the context within which they are used. As a result, the gap between user needs and application functionality can be perpetuated. For SAP to bridge this gap, it is important to create composite application design-time tools that allow business users to participate in a more meaningful manner in the development of their applications.
Original design time tools: Visual composer, Composite Application Framework Core, Guided Procedure
Our approach
Our team applied various user research methods to discover opportunities for designing a business user enabled composite application design-time tool. We reviewed academic literature and business white paper, analyzed three other competing products, performed heuristic evaluation on the current tools, and conducted contextual inquiries with our target users.
Based on the research data, we identified that there is a great opportunity in designing a composite application design-time tool that integrates with the business process expert - a unique group of users who drive and facilitate the establishment of new or improved business processes in an enterprise setting. BPXs have the knowledge of both the business process and system capabilities. This user group is responsible for driving and facilitating the establishment of new or improved business processes in the company.
We found the most convinsing design opportunity in developing a tool that enables business process experts to model and evaluate composite applications efficiently and to create tangible artifacts in various forms that can be used to communicate and promote business process improvement.
We derived a set of design implications which drove and guided our final solution:
Leveraging commonly used notation and UI components
It is discovered from user research that flow diagram and the swimlane are used view as the main visualization of the business process and workflow. We also realized that leveraging the user interface controls and paradigms provided in the commonly used tools, such as Visio and Google Maps, might greatly reduce the learning curve of our system.
Varying granularity of process visualization
Business process experts often take the drill-down approach to understanding a business process. They need to be see the big pictures of the entire business process without distractions from all the minor details. Also, to focus on the details of individual sub-tasks and modules with the context of the higher-level processes is strongly recommended in the user studies. Our solution attempts to address these needs mentioned above by introducing the paradigm of a zoomable user interface with varying granularity in the process visualization. In a zoomable user interface, user can zoom out to see the less detailed process overview or zoom in to manipulate the configuration and workflow of the sub-processes.
Seeing prototype in action
We learned from the user research that the most practical way of convincing endusers to accept and adapt to the changes in their work process is to present a working prototype of the future state of the process. Business process experts pointed out that business process flow diagram is insufficient to communicate the implications of process change to the end-users. In addition, a prototype of the resulting composite application immediately relates to the end users' tasks. Our design we propose to allow users to quickly generate user interfaces for the end user based on the workflow model.
Providing contextual help
Developers and users of SAP systems complained about missing help functionality within tools. Additionally, according to research in the realm of end-user programming, knowing which operators and services logically flow together is one of the most difficult tasks for end-users in constructing a comprehensive workflow. We aimed to incorporate the need of providing help based on the model's status and user's current task in the tool we designed. Solutions such as suggesting the next possible steps in a chain of actions would ease the user's burden in maintaining the syntactical integrity of the composite application model.
My involvement
I was the User Testing Lead of the project, and was in charge of arranging user testings and analysing the gathered data into meaningful forms of usability analysis. The project involved multiple user research session include 16 contextual inquiry with business process experts, IT managers and developers, business consultants, 9 concept validation sessions, 11 low-fidelity and wireframe sessions and final interactive prototype walkthrough. Also, taking a creative leap in converting the insights from the user research into refined usability aspects and pleasurable user interaction is one of the major contribution for the project team. Scenarios and storyboards for concept validation and wireframes on major interaction of the prototype are generated from members of the project.
Affinity diagram (click to enlarge)
Deliverable
We proudly present JIGSAW, a composite application design-time tool for business process experts.
The business process modeling environment in JIGSAW (click to enlarge)
The workflow modeling environment in JIGSAW (click to enlarge)
JIGSAW is an integrated modeling environment:
An abstraction of the relationship between three different environments (click to enlarge)
Business Process Modeling: Structure the composites and create high-level process map visualization.
Workflow Modeling: Specify the core details of the composites.
Rapid prototype testing and delivery: Present a concrete proposal to the end-users and to gain statistical data for evaluation.
JIGSAW in Action
The SAP project team of MCHI class of 2007 proudly presents the JIGSAW demo video.
CLICK TO WATCH THE DEMO VIDEO
JIGSAW feature highlights:
1. Manual task (with human icon) VS System task (with system icon)
2. Task oriented workflow modeling. Two types of flow control: Navigation flow between screens (green) and Data flow (red) between both screens and services
3. Navigation in the visualization: A BPX has to be able to see the big picture and focus into the details, and to be aware of the context of the workflow and the dependency between different tasks
4. Screens/ Services Library: Leverage existing components and enables BPX to foster best practice
5. Prototype testing view
6. Interact with screens to test run-time behavior and understand their workflow context
7. Inspect service inputs and outputs, and discover the errors when they occur and find out why they occur
8. Visualization of data dependency
9. Prototype test log: Summary parameter data and statistical data helps BPX to analyze, evaluate, and document the proposed solution
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