You oughta be in pictures…

Recently, we received some great press from the big technology company SAP, via the Wall Street Journal, for some work we did for a leading retailer here in Canada. It’s been awesome watching our work help hundreds of end users, impacted by a serious systems overhaul, get what their new world will look like after all the dust settles.

We realized early on that this systems change was huge, complex and difficult to understand by IT geeks, let alone average Joes just trying to do their regular, day to day jobs. So, out with the 100 page Power Point decks, and in with the subway map, an analogy we built on to help end users see the impacts to their own departments and the knock-on effects across departments, plotted against a timeline. To quote the article, “this simple but powerful idea spurred quicker buy-in and deeper collaboration.” We’ll take that!

The lesson: SAP has its own special language (affectionately known in our circle as SAPANESE). So like a country welcoming visitors who don’t speak the language, when you need to convey a message (like bathroom locations, or in our case, what’s happening to whom, when), don’t use words; use pictures!

~Mel and Krishan