IBM Cloud App ID and Assist Me Win Indigo Design Awards
Dual design award wins for IBM Cloud tools and services
I’m excited to announce that the hard work of our team at IBM Cloud, Data and AI is being recognized again. Two of our services, IBM Cloud App ID and Assist Me, have received a gold Indigo Award in the UX, Interface & Navigation category. We’re delighted for being bestowed the top honors for design excellence.
The Indigo Awards recognize vision, innovation, and creativity in their participants, and look for designers who share a passion for the extraordinary. This is our second year in a row participating in these annual awards, and it’s really exciting to be recognized for our design work again.
It’s truly inspiring to see that our team has continued to come together and achieve design driven innovations even during these uncertain times. I feel proud to be a part of this community of designers who demonstrate their outstanding talent and work ethic to support our clients.
What is IBM Cloud App ID?
IBM Cloud App ID is a security authentication tool users can add to their mobile and web applications, helping them ensure a safer and more protected login to their applications. Users are able to easily integrate the tool with their existing applications without having to change or redeploy their application code. App ID offers advanced security capabilities such as multi-factor authentication, single sign-on, and user-defined password policies. It also includes features that make the tool more accessible and easy to integrate into users’ workflows, such as a customizable login UI, tailored user profiles, and the ability to review application usage for each user. App ID is compliant with industry standard regulations such as HIPAA and GDPR so that users don’t need to worry about policies and focus more on their business goals.
Designing a security authentication tool
IBM Cloud App ID is designed for developers that don’t necessarily have the skills to implement and code best security practices in their applications. The team conducted design thinking workshops, user interviews, and industry research to find out more about their target users and their needs. They found that many users didn’t know much about the security field, however they wanted an easy way to secure their applications and APIs. The design team behind this product wanted to create an experience that was easy to learn and integrate into existing applications. In order to help developers without security experience easily integrate this product into their workflows, the designers included an onboarding guide within the product that helps first time users with awareness and learning of the core product features.
What is Assist Me?
Assist Me is an AI-powered contextual user assistance messaging tool that users can integrate directly into their applications. This IBM Data and AI tool, provides support such as links to resources for specific questions, step-by-step instructions, on-call agents, and tailored search responses, all without interrupting the user’s workflow. This tool easily integrates into any enterprise software, and uses machine learning to understand the user, their needs, as well as the application that they’re using in order to provide tailored support.
Assist Me is a unique solution and is an exceptional application of machine learning and AI to a user assistance tool. It can able to pinpoint and address exactly where the user is in a particular experience, as well as immediately respond to their troubleshooting needs and questions not only when they occur, but even before they may arise. The tool is able to gather enough information about the user and their journey to be able to anticipate when they might need a specific resource or be approaching a common pitfall, and already have assistance prepared to provide as they are completing that task. The agility with which AI and machine learning is implemented in this tool is an impressive display of design and provides a great advantage for the user’s application.
Designing a user assistance machine learning tool
In order to create an effective user assistance tool, the design team behind Assist Me researched how users went through their user journeys of various software tools, what kind of assistance they preferred to receive, and at what points common questions arose. They also researched applications of AI technology in these scenarios. The design team found that one of the biggest pain-points for users was when their workflows were interrupted by troubleshooting issues, slowing them down and costing them time and resources. The team strived for a machine learning based tool that could anticipate errors proactively, as opposed to help solve them reactively i.e., after they already occurred. We are now embedding this tool into our core products, to provide users with contextual user assistance that aid with task completion.
Winning teams
IBM Cloud App ID
- Design lead: Hen Shkedi
- Design team: Shira Brin-Barak, Ilan Klein, Rottem Shaul
Assist Me
- Design director: Andrew Smith
- Team: Jim Tsimis
Arin Bhowmick (@arinbhowmick) is Vice President and Chief Design Officer, IBM Cloud, Data and AI, based in San Francisco, California. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
