Complex SAP analytics were being interpreted in silos. Collaborative, real-time decision-making (the kind that actually moves businesses) wasn't happening.
One of two designers with equal ownership across the full experience: spatial UX, onboarding, boardroom, and business decision simulator. Embedded across three dev teams for six months.
A deployed VR prototype shown to enterprise clients and government delegations across three continents. Now being extended with Accenture, with Nvidia discussions underway.
SAP wanted to rethink how enterprise decision-makers engage with business data — not just view it, but step inside it. The Hybrid Business Steering Demo was their answer: an immersive industrial metaverse where SAP's analytics capabilities became a collaborative, spatial experience. The brief was ambitious and the medium was new territory. There were no established VR UX conventions to lean on, no design system to inherit. We were building the rules as we went.
VR has no settled UX conventions. No established patterns for spatial information hierarchy, gaze-based navigation or collaborative decision flows. Every decision had to be reasoned from scratch and tested with real users wearing headsets.
Three development teams and two design teams with distinct responsibilities meant tight dependencies. Keeping design decisions coherent across the full pipeline meant constant structured communication and documentation.
You can't test a VR experience on a laptop. Every usability session required headsets, powerful hardware and a controlled environment. That constraint forced us to be deliberate about what we validated and when.
Due to a NDA, I can't share product screens beyond what's been publicly released. What I can share is how we thought.
No guidelines existed, so we built our own. Legibility at distance, interaction feedback in 3D space, how to orient users without overwhelming them, etc.
This wasn't a single-user product. Multiple stakeholders would be in the virtual space simultaneously, looking at the same data and making decisions together. The layout, data hierarchy and interaction patterns all had to work from multiple angles.
Early testing made one thing clear: Disorientation in the first 60 seconds killed engagement for the rest of the session. We rebuilt the onboarding flow to introduce the environment gradually. Controls first, context second, decisions last.
SAP's data is dense. The goal wasn't to summarize it. It was to make it spatially navigable. Made high-level KPIs visible at a glance. Details are revealed through deliberate interaction. The environment itself directs the attention, not instructional text.
How to use the controls, navigation, how to move through the space. All happens at their own pace with no pressure to act. We treated this as the foundation everything else rested on.
Get it wrong and users spend the rest of the experience lost.
Get it right, and they forget they're wearing a headset.
Mid-exploration, a notification appears: rising energy costs are threatening operational budgets. The users find the problem themselves. That distinction mattered to us.
Agency from the start.
Now that the problem is real, users bring their colleagues into the virtual boardroom to tackle it together. Live SAP data fills the space. Clicking highlighted areas reveals more detail and opens up possible actions.
Users adjust key variables like energy prices, capacity, raw material costs and watch the impact update in real time. They can also move machinery around the factory floor, with every change feeding directly into the data.
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Once a strategy is chosen, users return to the boardroom to see how the numbers shifted.
Hybrid business steering was named a flagship collaboration between SAP and Accenture at SAP Sapphire 2023 ↗
An urban development delegation from one of China's most active districts experienced the demo firsthand
Presented at SAP's flagship Latin American enterprise event, drawing executives and customers from across the region ↗
Showcased live to 50,000+ developers at SAP's flagship global developer conference
