AI Innovation at Scale: Designing AI UX at SAP

There has never been a more exciting time to be a designer. AI is evolving at lightning speed, unlocking new possibilities to enhance user experiences. A quick search for “AI UX innovations” reveals thousands of new products and interactions that are redefining visual and interaction design. However, much of this work remains experimental- untested and unrefined for real-world enterprise needs. This is where today’s designers have a once-in-a-generation opportunity: shaping the foundational AI UX paradigms that will become best practices for decades to come.

At SAP, we don’t just design for one product or one set of users- we design for hundreds of products, serving businesses whose data security is their most valuable asset. The challenge? Delivering cutting-edge AI experiences while ensuring trust and reliability. One way we do this is through inner source.

Sharing AI UX Innovations Across SAP

Inner source is like open-source collaboration, but inside a company. It allows teams across SAP to contribute their ideas and solutions to a shared design system, so good ideas can spread faster. Instead of every product team solving the same problems on their own, inner source helps them work together to improve AI experiences for all users.

A great example of this in action? AI-powered writing assistants.

From One AI Feature to a Scalable UX Pattern

AI writing assistants, like Grammarly and Microsoft CoPilot, have moved beyond novelty—they are now user expectations. A team at SAP’s SuccessFactors recognized the potential of this feature to improve how their users write job descriptions, performance feedback, and goals. They designed and built their own AI writing assistant—and it was a game-changer.

But instead of keeping it just for SuccessFactors, they teamed up with SAP’s AI Design Team to make it available across SAP’s products.

Making AI UX Simple, Reliable, and Accessible

Bringing an AI feature into SAP’s Design System is no small feat. Every AI UX pattern undergoes rigorous testing to ensure trust, accessibility, and compliance. The process involves scrutiny from product leaders, designers, developers, global accessibility teams, AI ethics reviewers, and legal experts. While a single-product company might deliver a feature in weeks, SAP’s scale means this process can take months, even years—but the payoff is enormous.

For the SuccessFactors team, this effort was worth it because they:

• Accelerated adoption of an enterprise-approved AI assistant their users can trust.

  • Ensured the feature works across all of SAP’s platforms.

  • Helped shape SAP’s approach to AI UX by sharing what they learned.

For the AI Design Team and SAP Design System, this collaboration meant:

• Delivering a tested and adaptable AI pattern that benefits all SAP products.
• Ensuring a trustworthy, scalable AI UX solution that product teams can adopt with confidence.

A Hands-On, Collaborative Design Process

So what does this actually look like from a designer’s perspective?

• SuccessFactors designers brought user research, domain expertise, and insights from their past explorations.
• AI Design designers provided cross-organizational alignment, AI-specific UX research, and the expertise to integrate the pattern into SAP’s Design System and UI framework.

Together, they iterated daily—refining designs, analyzing pros and cons, and aligning with compliance teams to ensure a globally scalable solution.

The Impact: AI UX at SAP

The journey took nine months—but that investment saves hundreds of product teams from repeating the same work. Over the next year, SAP’s AI Writing Assistant will spread across products, benefiting thousands of users and customers.

This is the balance of innovation and trust at SAP. If you’re a designer who thrives on complex, high-impact AI UX challenges, SAP is the place to shape the future of enterprise AI.