Designing Forward Spotlight Series
Sharing experiences, perspectives and reflections on all aspects of Design from IBM zSystems.
From humble beginnings to lasting impressions: How Design became a key player on a heavily technical product
by: Caroline Turner, Andreina Dyer, Brian Le and Cathy Zee-Poor
IBM zSystems creates mainframe servers and technologies that run on them. These systems are widely considered the technological backbone of our economy. They have been running critical business workloads for decades. Designers bring design thinking and practices to this technology created to help our clients modernize their legacy applications. “Designing Forward” captures the pioneering spirit of design in IBM zSystems and celebrates those at the forefront of our transformation. One such team works on the Automatic Binary Optimizer for z/OS (ABO) that falls under the IBM zSystems Compilers portfolio.
ABO is one of several Compiler products that has a three-in-a box team that comprises Design, Engineering and Product Management. We spoke to the team about their Design journey. Designers on the team include Florian Sperber, Design Lead and UX Designer; Jane Chang, UX and Visual Designer; and Yomna Abdelaziz, Design Researcher. Cheryl Fraser is the team’s upline Development Manager and Roland Koo is ABO’s Product Manager. The team shared how they formed a strong relationship, the impact of design, and how they deliver exceptional user experiences for compiler products.
Can you describe the Automatic Binary Optimizer for z/OS for someone who hasn’t heard of it before?
Florian: An application developer codes applications in a programming language. That code is compiled before it can run. Our customers work with code that has been developed over decades, so it’s especially hard to recompile an entire code base. Therefore, our customers have a lot of code that has not been recompiled in a long time. ABO, as the name suggests, automatically processes customers’ COBOL module binaries to optimize their performance without the need to manually recompile them.
Cheryl: It is intended to save time, expense and to leverage the company’s investment in their zSystems hardware. It is not practical to recompile all your COBOL code each time a new version of the hardware comes out. COBOL code inventories are often very large. You have to do a lot of testing. Sometimes you have to tweak code and options if the code has not been recompiled in a long time. This process is error prone. With ABO you don’t change your business logic. You get performance improvements with a minimal amount of testing.
Roland and Cheryl, what was your experience with designers joining the ABO team?
Roland: Before we had designers, product management and development focused on a lot of technical stuff. We used to collect low-level feature requirements and didn’t look at a higher level. When design joined, they helped us organize our thoughts and build out a framework for the product going forward. They helped us get feedback more effectively from customers.
Cheryl: We used to have design partner programs where we showed clients pretty well-developed features to get their feedback. But the introduction of design and design thinking was a huge transformation that taught us that we needed to get feedback from clients early on to understand their priorities and pain points.
How was design integrated into the ABO project?
Florian: Nick Sharp, our design manager and Design Program Director, was a huge influencing factor. He made sure that the design team had a seat at the table and gave us a platform to demonstrate our expertise. From the start, the three-in-a-box team was open to design thinking but didn’t fully understand what we would contribute as designers. That changed as we were able to showcase our impact in the first Playback 0. That’s when the team realized the importance of a design team on something so technical.
Our design team’s redesign exponentially reduced the time it takes to complete the trial.
What was that first Playback 0 about?
Jane: When Florian and I joined, we picked up a completed Patterns Incubator project. (Patterns is IBM’s design education program.) The project was to improve the proof-of-concept process for ABO. We did some research to validate the project’s outcomes and iterated on their designs. It eventually became the ABO Cloud Trial Service that allows customers to try ABO before purchasing it. Our design team’s redesign exponentially reduced the time it takes to complete the trial.
Designers, would you say that your non-designer teammates are design thinkers?
Jane: When we started only some three-in-a-box members were familiar with design thinking. Since working with us and seeing the results, developers are encouraging each other to use design thinking. Just before this interview we were meeting with a development manager and she told us, “I want my developers to take a step back and make sure that they’re solving for the right problem.” It is really cool to see the entire team having a design thinking approach on their own.
Roland and Cheryl, what makes your design team easy to work with?
Roland: They are very flexible. Sometimes we aren’t very organized or priorities shift. The designers are very accommodating and patient. They are always happy to educate new development squads who don’t understand design. All of that makes them easy to work with.
Cheryl: Florian works on deeply technical products, and he has a very good understanding of the product and customer base. He’s gotten to know a lot of our clients and their pain points. And Yomna has taught me a lot about research. Before working with her, I conducted some user interviews myself. I had a habit of asking leading questions, pushing the conversation to where I wanted to go. Yomna’s approach is very open-ended, allowing the client to lead the conversation.
What advice would you give to designers joining a new three-in-a-box team that hasn’t worked with design before?
Roland: I would encourage a new designer to ask questions. There are no stupid questions. The people who are working on our technology live and breathe it everyday. Designers should feel comfortable approaching someone on the team to have them describe a particular area they don’t understand.
Jane: Designers should try to influence or recruit design advocates. Introducing the design thinking approach to an unfamiliar team can be challenging. However, with close collaboration and support from the product manager, developer lead, and design researcher, Yomna, can make a significant impact to the outcome. I used to work on my own to decide what design approach to take for a project. I got overwhelmed and stressed out. But now I reach out to Yomna and certain PMs or developers. Their perspectives play a big role in my design plan and approach.
Yomna: My advice would be to learn the roles and responsibilities of your colleagues. For example, we were lucky to have members of our Sales teams get involved during the design process as usability testing participants. I was able to develop a lot of empathy for them after interviewing them and learning about their roles. Having this empathy helps with team dynamics and working efficiently.
Florian: While it is intimidating to come in to such a technical field, you can trust the process and get far without knowing much of the domain. So much of the value we bring is in the process of aligning the team. Use the methodologies you learned and empathize with the people we’re building for.
Yomna: That’s something I really struggled with too, Florian. For a while I thought design thinking wasn’t meant for something like compilers. But I started to realize it’s not about designing a compiler — which is a different and highly complex technical domain in its own right. It’s about helping developers to take a step back and make sure they’re solving the right problem. It became clear to me that if we weren’t involved, development teams might not solve the right problems. We help them understand more about the users.
What do you consider your team’s biggest success story?
Florian: The ABO Cloud Trial is the first thing that comes to mind. Not only was it the first business challenge we took on, but it established our seat at the table and gave us the opportunity to work with other products. We now have strong relationships with these teams across the compilers portfolio. It demonstrated the value of the design process.
Jane: The ABO Cloud Trial was a stepping stone for design to shine in the entire space. Now, when a product in our portfolio starts a new release, they always bring in the design team.
Yomna: Another is the “strategy alignment initiative” that Nick set up. We discuss strategy for the whole compilers organization and are directly co-creating with product management.
What is the biggest challenge in designing for ABO right now?
Florian: Even though ABO has been around for about 10 to 15 years, adoption has recently accelerated. There has been some skepticism since we’re telling clients that ABO will transform their compiled programs to make it work better. There are also regulations for a lot of industries, so the design challenge is not only how do we make the technology more transparent, but how can we build trust in the technology. Our challenge is to make sure our users know their programs will work exactly how they did before but have better performance.
Roland: From development’s perspective, we want designers everywhere. We certainly have a huge list of things we want to do, and we would love to expand the design team.
How is your team Designing Forward?
Cheryl: We are so integrated with the design team, which is a testament to the way they work and how we work together. We completely forget that they’re technically in another organization because everyone is so connected.
Yomna: We are bringing design to the center of strategy for the entire Compilers portfolio, including ABO. Business and design are becoming more intertwined, which I think is really awesome.
Thank you to the ABO three-in-a-box team for sharing your story of bringing a deeply technical product to the forefront of design collaboration. ABO is part of IBM zSystems, a community of innovators, creators, and design thinkers. We have embraced our pioneering spirit that proved Design as a valued practice in our business. We have made great progress yet recognize there is always room for improvement and growth. As we continue to evolve — reflecting on where we currently are and where we want to be — we are committed to pursuing better outcomes. We are Designing Forward.
Cathy Zee-Poor is a Design Program Director at IBM based in New York City. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
