DATA VISUALIZATION
SAP Data Visualization
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The final data visualizations on the SAP Digital Boardroom for this retail company:
1) Left Screen; 2) Middle Screen; 3) Right Screen; 4) All Three Screens on Monitor
PROJECT BRIEF
This was a professional UI design project done with a data analyst during a COOP term for the company SAP. I was hired as a Film & Marketing intern and thus made most of the creative decisions for graphical and media based marketing materials. However, for this project I had taken on the role as a UI designer. This was a weeklong project where we were tasked with creating environmental data visualization for a retail company using the SAP Digital Boardroom. The SAP Digital Boardroom is a software that allow companies to monitor and drive change in the digital economy by providing executives with a comprehensive, real-time view of business performances across an entire company. The goal of this project was to show the capabilities that this retailer could harnessed if they utilized the SAP Digital Boardroom in their enterprise activities. Thus, if successful it could foster future partnerships between SAP and this retailer.
ABOUT SAP
SAP is a German company that creates enterprise software, analytics and mobile solutions that helps other small and large companies manage their businesses. Examples can include inventory management, production planning and order entry. SAP has been active since 1972 and has offices in 130 countries, serving 335,000 customers in 190 countries. The department that I work in is called Global Analytics Marketing, located in Waterloo, Ontario. This department focuses on marketing analytics solutions, including predictive analytics, business intelligence, data visualization, and enterprise planning.
ABOUT THE CLIENT
The client was a retail company. They were concerned about their environmental impact and thus, had made an environmental mandate for 2025. Some of their goals included reducing resource usage, reducing wastage and improving workers’ rights.
PROCESS
: Learning
the Software
Learning how to use the SAP Digital Boardroom was
a bit of a challenge as it was a completely new
working system. Thus, we had to learn how to
navigate its interface, how to use it to create graphs
and how to use it for presentations.
PROCESS
PROCESS
: Gathering Data
The first part of this project was gathering and
organizing data in order to create the graphs. The
client gave us many sources from their company to
extract data from. They also provided a general
guideline for possible groupings of data. Otherwise,
we had to do our own research and create data.
Sorting the type of data needed
: Creating
the Graphs
The data analyst and I both worked on creating the graphs due to the limited amount of time, meaning that it did not seem possible to have the data analyst solely focus on generating the data visualizations while I focus on the layout. As this was not my area of expertise, I allowed the data analyst to make the decisions on how to best represent each set of data while I helped to generate them. To generate them, we first had to organize them in Microsoft Excel in order to import them into SAP Digital Boardroom to generate the visualizations. This was sometime a challenge because the data must be organized in a certain way in order for the software to properly register them. Thus, the desired outcome for the graphs such as what would represent the X and Y axis, and the filtering system is dependent on the spreadsheet.
Example of formatting the data in Excel
PROCESS
: Creating the Layouts
For the layout, we tried to follow the guideline provided by the client who listed types of information that they
would like to show and their goals. As the SAP Digital Boardroom consists of three screens, we had their
“Main Sustainability 2025 Goals” on the left, their “Operations” on the center and their “Sustainable
Products” on the left. To start, we had drawn some sketches to show possible layouts. Though very
speculative, it helps give a general idea for both the client and ourselves for organization. As for the colour
scheme, we utilized the retailer’s branding guide.
For grouping of information, we had first ordered the information by similarities. Then we had to figure out
what would be the units of each comparison. However, figuring out the relationships proved to be a
challenge because we would also need to find relevant data to support these relationships, or generate
them. For example, in the first iteration of sketches, we had envisioned the “Zero Global Waste by 2025”
chart to be a geographical chart that highlights area of wastage. Though once we started to do research, we
had found that there was not enough data to represent wastage by location and thus, needed to represent it
in simpler units; which resulted in a bar graph that shows tons of waste and diverted waste by year.
Following this, it had formed the general workflow and design rationale for the rest since clarity of
information was more important than being innovative. Thus, from the first to the third iteration, it was
mostly a matter of refining the data to better reflect their desired goals.
Sketch of the left screen
Sketch of the center screen
Sketch of the right screen
Layout of the left screen
Layout of the center screen
Layout of the right screen
First Iterations
Second Iterations
Sketch of the left screen
Sketch of the center screen
Sketch of the right screen
Layout of the left screen
Layout of the center screen
Layout of the right screen