16 Things I did at IBM in 2016
Being a product designer in a large enterprise
The tagline for 2016 seems to be “2016 sucks,” and while that may be true politically for some, the tech industry in 2016 has advanced by orders of magnitude. Being a part of this industry, I’ve had the chance to witness this surge firsthand. Looking back at the opportunities I’ve had over the past year, I too had the opportunity to grow (and tweet). Here are 16 things that I had the privilege of doing at IBM in 2016.
1. I lived in Austin for 3 months.
IBM’s onboarding process for new designers consists of a 3-month immersive design bootcamp, during which all new designers come to Austin, Texas to train before being deployed to their teams. During this time, I met new IBMers from around the world, worked on various product teams, got acquainted with the IBM Design Language, and accumulated more than 30 hours of GoPro footage. Austin is a super cool city — I had the chance to tour it and the surrounding cities, which allowed me to dive into a region of the country I previously had no exposure to.
2. I worked on Security and Cloud product teams.
During Design Bootcamp, I worked on incubator projects from several product teams and interviewed applicable users at prominent Fortune 500 companies. This provided me a short but thorough understanding of their respective domains and users. Very rarely do new designers get access to so many complex and diverse industries.
3. I wrote a six-part blog series that got posted by IBM, published on medium, and published in our internal magazine.
I worked with IBM Design’s Head of Communications to plan and write a six-part blog series detailing the Design Bootcamp experience. It was a large undertaking, but well worth it. It was promoted on IBM’s social media accounts, published on Medium, and printed in our internal magazine, All Things X.
4. My team and I shipped a brand new product.
As soon as I got deployed to my Analytics team in San Francisco, I hit the ground running with our assignment to design a new product called IBM Data Science Experience. This was a huge learning opportunity that allowed me to get involved in developing a product from conception to public release. I wrote an in-depth blog post about lessons learned from this experience.
5. I taught myself Adobe Premiere Pro to make our Data Science Experience launch video.
Two weeks before publicly launching Data Science Experience (DSX), my manager asked if any of us had video experience. Having made the Design Bootcamp video, I raised my hand — unknowingly volunteering to film, edit, and produce the launch video for DSX. Bad idea? Probably. I learned Adobe Premiere Pro by immersing myself in the world of YouTube tutorials and, two weeks later, delivered the video and it premiered onstage at Spark Summit in front of thousands of people.
6. I designed the DSX marketing website.
In the latter half of the year, I worked on redesigning our DSX marketing site. Having spent months developing the product itself, I welcomed this task as a nice change of pace. I distilled many designs — using both user testing and help from content teams — into a visually appealing and informative experience. Designing a marketing site is an entirely different endeavor than designing a product, but proved equally as rewarding.
7. I branded Apache SystemML in 4 days.
The team of engineers working on Apache’s SystemML project came to us for help designing a marketing site and making a video detailing their process. Unpacking this ask, we discovered that it was basically a design challenge. I designed the marketing page in about 24 hours, and produced the video in the following three days. The site has since been polished a bit by other designers, who are working on it full time.
8. I visited Austin again.
The Analytics division has their own design guide, and while this does allow us to focus more on the product UX, we ran into some design constraints. As such, I returned to the glorious city of Austin right before Labor Day weekend to work with our lead visual designer on solving the issues we were having with the design language and some icons. I was also able to sneak in some visits with Bootcamp friends who still work in Austin and went tubing down a river in the sweltering Texas heat.
9. My team and I biked across the Golden Gate Bridge.
Our San Francisco design team biked from our office on Market Street across the Golden Gate Bridge for lunch in Sausalito. It was a really fun day, and we all, somehow, survived the treacherous but scenic 11 mile bike ride. Trying to avoid the onslaught of tourists on a bike almost led to my unfortunate demise, but hey, at least I got a great Insta from it.
10. I went to Toronto to work with our development team.
In the weeks leading up to our official product launch, I, along with a couple other designers from San Francisco, flew to Toronto to work side-by-side with the developers to make sure everything was implemented efficiently. This was the first time I got to meet the whole development team, which was a great experience. I also managed to get free data from AT&T while in Canada, so I obviously had to go to Niagara Falls and Snapchat the entire experience.
11. I attended IBM World of Watson in Las Vegas.
Three of us from SF joined our worldwide team in Las Vegas to attend the official launch of the Watson Data Platform, the umbrella above Data Science Experience. We got to hear from the CEOs of GM and American Airlines, among other interesting business leaders. Also, it’s Vegas, so in the Vegas spirit, we spent too much money at a fancy restaurant and saw Imagine Dragons for free.
12. I moved into Watson West.
After months of anticipation, we finally moved into a brand new office building, which is complete with all the Silicon Valley must-haves — open floor plan, fully-stocked kitchen, and hipster furniture. IBM has three floors, one of which is half-filled with a “Watson Experience Center.” The move also gave us the distinct privilege of crafting the culture of a new space, which proved both freeing and rewarding. (Unfortunately, we still barely know how to use the technology in the new meeting rooms.)
13. I created a presentation that was shown to our CEO, Ginni Rometty.
Every year, top IBM products are presented to our CEO, Ginni Rometty. This year, Data Science Experience was chosen to be included. This meant we had to create a deck that could briefly explain what our product was and why it was important to IBM. A co-worker and I spent a week working on the deck and polishing the visuals. Hope she likes it!
14. I met Ginni Rometty.
Coincidentally, Ginni visited San Francisco to inaugurate our new Watson West building right as we finished the presentation for her. While she was here, she also held a town hall, after which IBM employees had the chance to speak with her. I got to talk with her for a few minutes about my work at IBM, took a selfie, and she even complimented me on my name. Success!
15. I ordered too much Boba Guys from Postmates.
This one should really be numbers 1–16. My team and I — probably singlehandedly — have kept Postmates in business by ordering Boba Guys at least once a week to our office. I know we are so stereotypically Silicon Valley, but the Boba is too good to pass up. Now, all Postmates needs is a group-order function. Ironically, they were also our neighbor in our old office building.
16. I made a video for our new organization.
We love videos! At the end of the year, our Analytics division had a reorg. To help explain this and rally the whole team, a group of us were asked to make a video. A co-worker and I led the initiative, getting footage from studios around the world, and coordinating voiceovers and music creation. It was challenging in ways, but ultimately very rewarding to work with our IBM colleagues from around the globe.
Most young designers don’t get these kinds of opportunities, especially in a single calendar year. I’m really thankful to IBM for the adventures I’ve had in 2016. Here’s to the next one!
Special thanks to David Mostovoy, Emily Kehner, Carrie Curtin, and Jessica Gore for making me sound smarter than I am.
