IBM Service Corps: Making an impact during a global pandemic
Leveraging Enterprise Design Thinking to improve P-TECH’s alumni network
I was honored to receive the opportunity to participate in the IBM Service Corps program, which enables employees to help local and distant communities with economic development, education, health, social services and sustainability. While I was in the program, I was able to gain a better understanding of the issues facing these communities and the satisfaction of being able to help provide solutions to address their specific problems. In doing so, I was able to expand my network and develop my leadership skills.
In January 2020, I was exploring IBM Service Corps opportunities and came across a local project with P-TECH Brooklyn. Pathways in Technology Early College High Schools (P-TECH) are innovative public schools spanning grades 9 to 14 that bring together the best elements of high school, college and career. After getting approval from my management team, I applied to the program. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all in-person IBM Service Corps projects were being paused. It felt as if my dream opportunity was ripped away just as quickly as I found it.
Eight months later, I was contacted by a member of the IBM Service Corps team letting me know that the P-TECH project was now virtual and I immediately reapplied. Within a short period of time, I was confirmed and diving head first into a new temporary assignment with a new team. The scope of the project was six short weeks, which left us little time to get to know each other. Our team included IBM professionals from design, consulting, project management and sales. I was nervous that it would be hard for us all to adapt to each other’s work styles but we all kept an open mind and were flexible, which made it easy to collaborate together virtually.
Kicking off the project:
Our IBM Service Corps team started working with P-TECH Brooklyn to understand the challenges that current alumni and program managers experience when attempting to connect with their peers and the greater network. Our goal was to design a better way for P-TECH graduates and program managers to engage with and learn from their global network so that they can realize the value of being a part of P-TECH and pay it forward to the broader community.
In the first two weeks, we recruited sponsor users and facilitated user interviews to better understand the challenges faced by P-TECH alumni and program managers. For many of my IBM Service Corps project team members and sponsor users, this was their first time doing formal user interviews. We spoke to 17 users across the PTECH grad and project manager roles. We were able to quickly understand what a “day in the life” looks like for alumni and program managers. We listened to their pain points and looked for opportunities to formalize their insights. We synthesized our research in Mural and I facilitated an internal workshop with my team to take our research findings and create empathy maps which evolved into our two personas:
Chris is a P-TECH Program Manager who cares about his students and will do anything to ensure they are successful.
Shayla recently graduated from P-TECH and is currently working at IBM in her first job. In addition to gaining professional experience, she is passionate about building her P-TECH network.
Co-creating our solution with our users:
We facilitated a design thinking workshop with 15 sponsor users and stakeholders over the course of three days. During the workshop, we organized the attendees into two groups and assigned each group a persona to keep top of mind. Our workshop consisted of:
Day 1:
Empathy mapping and persona evolution
Day 2:
As-is scenario, need statements, idea prioritization
Day 3:
Big idea maturation
We collectively brainstormed over 50 creative ideas to meet Chris and Shayla’s needs. Following the workshop, I took the big ideas from both groups, and created a combined to-be journey which represented possible future scenarios for both personas. After presenting this journey to our sponsor users, they provided feedback and we pivoted the to-be journey. After many iterations, our sponsor users rallied behind the solution and we took this concept forward to design.
Design, test and iterate
After many iterations on our user journey, we began wireframing and designing our solution, which we called the P-TECH Alumni Hub. This platform is a one-stop shop where people like Chris and Shayla can quickly and easily network with other P-TECH alumni, program managers, and industry partners across the globe.
“I think this is amazing, it looks user-friendly. You have integrations with LinkedIn and other social accounts, messaging, it’s very interactive. It’s great! — Sponsor user + Program Manager
Design thinking is a way of working in which we travel “through the loop,” or a cycle of observation, reflection, and making. We did this a handful of times before getting sponsor user feedback and evolving the designs. Their feedback and co-creation was key to the process and allowed us to deliver two high fidelity prototypes as our final deliverable.
MVP and beyond:
After the sixth week of the program, we had our final stakeholder playback where we shared our prototypes, an execution roadmap, and recommendations. The overall sentiment from our stakeholder team was positive and our sponsor users expressed gratitude for building a great solution that solves their problems and addresses their needs.
“I appreciate you guys listening and taking our feedback into account. You’ve done a lot in six weeks. It’s incredible.” — P-TECH Operations Manager, Education & Skills, Corporate Social Responsibility
“…I know this is a huge undertaking and the amount that you guys were able to pull off in these short weeks is just truly incredible. I’m just so excited that we actually have a path forward here that is really really thoughtful. Thanks so much. You guys are the dream team.” — Manager, P-TECH Education
Reflection
So what are my key takeaways from this experience? Find a mission that aligns with your values and give it your all. I went to college to pursue a teaching degree in high school history but deviated because at the time, teaching jobs were not plentiful and it didn’t look like a great career path. Pivoting my career was the only logical thing to do at that time but I still held onto that passion to help kids learn. When I first learned about IBM’s commitment to social corporate responsibility and Ginni Rometty’s P-TECH initiative, I made it my mission to find an opportunity to help youth in underserved communities. This IBM Service Corps opportunity reignited a spark in me that merged my love for education and social good. I am extremely grateful to have experienced this IBM Service Corps deployment during a year of many challenges. My hope is that others can find opportunities to give back and make a difference that will last for many years to come!
If you’re interested in learning more about P-TECH and want to get involved, visit PTECH.org.
Jessica Katz is a UX Designer at IBM based in New York City. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
