Career Review: IBM
A look into my responsibilities and contributions at IBM
Overview
Background
At the beginning of 2020, I started my new role with IBM as a UX Designer which later evolved into a UX Designer and Strategist Lead role. I currently work within the Systems business unit working on cloud-based DevOps products and service offerings. In addition to my direct product work, I have also had the opportunity to do work within other business units including Watson, Quantum, and the Design Program Office.
Career Growth Map
During my time at IBM, I have focused on growing my eminence as a designer both internally at the company and externally through the larger design community. Internally, I worked hard on my product, making sure to understand the complex architecture while familiarizing myself with the business strategy to become more impactful with my work as I worked side-by-side with product managers, engineers, and marketing. Externally, I used my skills in both writing and communication to help share my experience and mentor students on their journey to becoming UX Designers.
Since starting at IBM, I have co-founded the Strategic Foresight Guild, received a band-level promotion, became the Lead Designer for both Wazi and Pipeline, made the Design Lead of the internal JumpStart Program for engineers, identified as the Rising Star of 2022, and had my patent filed by the company.
Internal Contributions
IBM Systems Strategy Multiverse
As part of our annual design summit, I was asked to join a design strategy team that was looking to solve a problem which was that designers found it increasingly difficult to understand the larger IBM business strategies and how they impacted the work of their products and portfolios. Having had a lot of experience working with strategy and system maps during my Master of Design education, I decided to lead our team in creating a product ecosystem map that helped visualize our products in a new way and display to designers how the top-down business strategies impacted their work. The result of which was found to be very valuable for designers and became a living document for all future product updates.
Wazi as a Service - Sponsor User Program
The Wazi as a Service Sponsor User Program was a 6-month-long initiative I led that used several research methods to collect user research data to improve the overall experience of the service offering prior to its launch at the end of the program. Although I only had access to one junior user researcher to help with note-taking, I managed 22 company participants, each with 2-6 members through 46 user sessions. I collected and synthesized user research to create valuable insights and recommendations to improve the experience for our users and ensure a smooth product launch.
The Strategic Foresight Guild
With my Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation, I saw an opportunity to bring that skill set to IBM and help future-proof their products and services. When I first co-founded the guild with Roosevelt Faulkner and Meghan McGrath in 2020, we only had 6 members that would attend the monthly meetings I would lead. Now the guild has grown to over 360 members, including executives. The monthly meetings alternate between educational lectures and training that I lead or external guests from other companies that share their experiences of growing strategic foresight at their companies.
Additional Contributions
In addition to my product and strategy work, I have also contributed to several key tools for the company to help grow its design maturity. These tools include the AI Quality Assessment Heuristics tool, the Strategic Foresight Toolkit, and the Carbon Mid-Fi Kit
AI Quality Assessment Heuristics | As a UX Designer that is passionate about Artificial Intelligence (AI) Design, I worked with several members of the AI Design Guild to develop a set of heuristics to evaluate AI from a quality and ethics perspective.
Strategic Foresight Toolkit | Myself, Meghan, and Roosevelt, co-founders of the Strategic Foresight Guild, developed a full toolkit to perform strategic foresight at IBM. The goal of this toolkit was to make the practice more accessible to designers and others at IBM to further drive innovation and future-proof our products.
Carbon Mid-Fi Kit | To help encourage designers to start designing in lower fidelities before moving into the high fidelity Carbon Design Kit, I developed a Mid-Fi Carbon kit that is now downloadable on the Carbon site and is used by designers across the company.
External Contributions
Teaching
As a passionate UX Designer, it is important for me to give back to the community that has enabled my career and help guide the new generation on their journey into UX Design. You can catch me teaching in the evenings at BrainStation as their Lead Instructor for the UX Design Course or once a week at York University as the Course Director for Prototyping and User-Centered Design Strategies, where I am responsible for teaching as well as developing the course curriculum.
Writing
In addition to my teaching, I am a passionate writer that is always looking for opportunities to write about design-related topics to share with the larger design community. Writing has allowed me to share UX concepts with other designers while also strengthening and deepening my knowledge of the field. You can find and read my articles at IBM Design, Adobe XD Ideas, and UX Planet.