IBM @ UT Austin

OVERVIEW

During the Fall of 2021, I had the opportunity to collaborate with designers from Quantum, Security, and Storage teams at IBM as part of a project with UT Austin’s School of Design and Creative Technologies.

Our team of 5 led by an IBM designer uncovered opportunities to make onboarding more fun and educational for new employees.

By the end, I leveraged interview insights and the advantage of an established Carbon Design System to pitch early concepts to management and industry leaders.

ROLE

Design Fellow

CONTRIBUTIONS

Research, Early Concepting Design

SUCCESS METRICS

  • Since this was a class project, the challenge was rather broad due to the lack of real business constraints. Despite this, we relied on what we heard from our users to frame what features we wanted to focus on for this project.

  • Although our client was IBM Storage, this was an internal tool that had the potential to scale across other teams at IBM. This was an important metric to consider since it had a large impact.

  • In order for this to be built seamlessly, working within the constraints of an established design system was key in bringing this idea to life.

DURATION

Sep - Dec 2021

CLIENT

IBM Data Storage

PROBLEM

You’re new to the team, and need to get ramped up, fast

IBM Storage’s current onboarding process was ineffective in onboarding new designers onto the team.

Designers took about 5-8 months to know enough stuff to move, make, reflect on things and comfortably reach out to their colleagues. 

SUMMARY

  • Create the best in breed onboarding experience for new designers joining IBM Storage. Something that is fun, educational, but effective so that new hires can start contributing quickly.

  • For a large enterprise company like IBM, a successful onboarding experience is crucial due to the scale and complexity of the organization. This can impact retention, productivity and overall job satisfaction.

  • A personalized onboarding dashboard that welcomes new designers’ needs for a more tailored learning experience.

    • Guided Walkthrough

    • Carbon Bot

    • Carbon Desk

    • Learning Modules

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

We identified 3 goals new designers seek in their first 30, 60, 90 days on a new team.

We interviewed 14 people, 3 teams, ages 22-33 and clustered similar themes found across our interviewees.

1

A virtual walkthrough of the onboarding platform 

2

Access to personalized learning modules 

3

An AI chatbox that can answer basic questions 

THE SOLUTION

Introducing, a more personalized onboarding experience for new designers joining IBM.

HOMEPAGE - FIRST ENTRY POINT

A guided walkthrough that welcomes new designers to their workspace

I designed a guided walkthrough that leverages similar patterns in learning software to make this experience more personalized.

Next steps

Leverage AI to turn onboarding documents into podcast format to tailor to different learning styles.

WEEKLY MODULES

More interactive learning

Weekly modules give designers a chance to test and hone their domain knowledge. Each module has a series of videos, with a Q&A thread and ‘Quick Checks’ to gauge understanding.

CARBON BOT

A new hire’s digital companion

Introducing Carbon Bot, an AI-powered chatbot that assists designers by answering questions related to onboarding processes, domain-specific knowledge, and team documentation. 

A NEW TAKE ON AN OLD TRADITION

Revamping the navigation panel to improve usability

01. CARBON DESK

Bookmark important links and access employee portals, conveniently located in the upper left corner of the navigation panel. 

02. NAVIGATION PANEL

Where designers can find important links to team documentation.

LEARNINGS

Leveraging best practices, vision alignment and compromise make things more tangible.

Huge thanks to the IBM Austin team for an insightful 3 months 💜

02. Finding alignment on scope of problem

This project challenged me end-to-end. Onboarding a large design organization presented plenty of opportunities but made scoping difficult. The problems were expansive, and we soon realized that it was more efficient to find alignment on the problem rather than finding the perfect solution.

01. Leveraging best practices to scale

Working with an established design system with best practices made the iteration process fun, manageable and filled with many possibilities.

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