• Chris
    Allen

  • I lead the global design team for the New Ventures & Technologies organization at SAP.  We are on a mission to future-proof the company through product incubation and technology innovation.

    When I'm not running around the office, I'm exploring the Bay Area with my family, playing fetch with my cattle dog, or chasing my 3 year old daughter around the backyard like a hooligan.

  • SAP

    Head of Design, NVT
    2016-Present

  • Flipboard

    Lead Product Designer
    2013-2016

  • Peapod

    Lead Product Manager
    2009-2013

  • Motorola

    Product Manager
    2007-2009

  • SAP

    September 2016 - Today

  • At SAP, I've been focused on three goals. First, to create a strong design team with a creative culture and passion for delivering excellent product experiences for our customers. Second, to influence and impact design at one of the largest enterprise software companies in the world. And third, to help scale our organization from 7 to over 350 in 3 years.

  • Ruum

    Collaboratively plan, organize and execute your work efficiently.

    Ruum is built with Angular and designed for mobile and primarily desktop use when it comes to building flexible project templates, assigning and managing tasks and timelines, as well as modeling new business processes. I created the initial concepts and worked with developers in Berlin to release their beta.

    Once Ruum was off to the races, I helped hire incredible designers in Matthias Stegmueller, Julia Shkatova, and Sarah Mautsch. My favorite aspect about Ruum is it's clean and simple interface to collaborate with team members in real time on all kinds of different types of projects.

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  • Dabra Concept Designs Dabra Concept Designs

  • Dabra

    Have focused & productive 1:1 meetings while building trust with the people you work with.

    Dabra is built with Vue.js and designed for mobile and desktop use when it comes to preparing, facilitating, and synthesizing meetings. I created the initial concepts for the application and worked with developers in Tel Aviv to release their beta.

    Once Dabra was up and running, I hired incredible designers in Javier Yep and Daniel Jacoby to bring Dabra to the next level. My favorite aspect about Dabra is the ability to view the notes history of my conversations - it's particularly helpful when having performance discussions.

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  • Dabra Concept Designs Dabra Concept Designs

  • iO Icons

    This project started out as a creative outlet on my commute to and from San Francisco - a simple redesign of Google's Material Design Icons using the style of Feather Icons.

    After many trips on the train, the icon set has grown to more than 1,500 icons covering all of SAP's Fiori Icons in addition to the Material Design icon set. The main challenge was creating a set of ingredients (2px stroke, minimal fill shapes, rounded linecaps, etc) in order to scale the set across all of SAP for easy collaboration.

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  • Atlas

    A geospatial analytics platform built to make data-driven decisions easy for everyone.

    Atlas was built with Vue.js and most interactions were tied tightly to Mapbox when it came to manipulating the map and viewing a variety of data visualization types in 2D and 3D. I created the initial concepts and worked with the developers in San Francisco to release their beta.

    Once Atlas was available for productive use, I hired Lucia Melgarejo and David Shen to explore how we can visualize geospatial data over time across multiple layers. Unfortunately after a couple years, it was clear we wouldn't find a product market fit, so we decided to go through the painful process of sunsetting the venture.

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  • Atlas Concept Designs Atlas Concept Designs

  • Spotlight

    Actionable operations insights from all your enterprise business systems.

    Spotlight is built with Vue.js and designed for primarily desktop use when it comes to monitoring business process, comparing metrics to industry standards, and tracking operational improvements over time. I created the initial concepts and worked with developers in Berlin to release their alpha.

    Once Spotlight was released as a pilot to early customers, I transitioned the work to David Shen and Laura Ileana Ramirez Rivera. My favorite aspect about Spotlight is its ability to analyze all processes in a single view, allowing COOs to make data-driven decisions on "what to fix first."

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  • Spotlight Concept Designs Spotlight Concept Designs

  • Flipboard

    I came to Flipboard to learn everything there was about product design for mobile apps at scale. I learned that the prototype is king and that a good designer iterates through as many completely different concepts as possible in order to arrive at something special. I also learned my job as a designer is to essentially rip out anything superfluous in the interface until the experience breaks.

    I worked on a variety of features across mobile, tablet, and web in a few key areas including user on-boarding, curation, community, and growth. I joined at about 80 people and witnessed explosive growth in both our monthly active users as well as employees - both doubling during the time I was there.

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  • Peapod

    I began my career at Peapod as a business analyst working on web applications for their loyalty program. After managing the release of multiple hybrid mobile apps, I took the lead product management role for the core eCommerce platform and also served as the sole product designer. With the support and mentorship from the CEO and CTO, I moved to the Bay Area to pursue my freshly formed passion in product design.

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  • Motorola s305 Headset

  • Motorola

    s305 wins LAPTOP’s Best of CTIA Wireless 2009 Award for Accessories

    My first job out of school was a dream job - I got to play around with the latest Bluetooth hardware technologies while learning about developing business cases for a variety of products, including wireless speakers and headphones. I was also lucky enough to travel to Shenzhen to manage the production of my first product, the S305.

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