People + Places + Practices = Outcomes
Summary
In this talk, the speaker from IBM shares insights on cultivating a lasting design culture within a massive organization of 380,000 employees. Referencing collaborators like Phil, Doug, Charlie, and Susan, the talk stresses that culture is behavior over time, shaped by values, rituals, heroes, symbols, and practices. IBM’s design program grew rapidly, hiring over 750 designers through a rigorous process involving portfolio reviews, phone screens, and intensive in-person interviews led by a team including the speaker. New hires undergo a three-month onboarding to learn IBM design thinking and develop collaboration skills. IBM created flexible, people-centric studio spaces in Austin and elsewhere to promote productive teamwork beyond typical silos. The core IBM design practice revolves around IBM design thinking, emphasizing user outcomes, multidisciplinary teams, and a continuous loop of observe, reflect, and make. Influenced by conversations with David Kelley and Tim Brown, IBM adapted design thinking for scale, introducing tools like Hills, Playbacks, and Sponsor Users to maintain alignment and accessibility. The IBM design language balances unity and creative freedom across thousands of products, supported by embedded accessibility and bespoke design guides. The upcoming IBM design research initiative encourages all employees to participate in research roles. Above all, the speaker cautions that design efforts must drive real outcomes benefiting users. Throughout, the team embraces iterative learning and course-correcting as the design culture evolves.
Key Insights
-
•
Culture is defined as behavior over time, shaped by how people choose to behave and incentivize behavior.
-
•
IBM’s design hiring process is extremely selective, choosing less than 1% of applicants through multi-stage reviews.
-
•
A three-month onboarding program is essential to help new hires integrate and embrace IBM design thinking.
-
•
Design studios at IBM are built to be highly flexible, with furniture on wheels enabling constant reconfiguration.
-
•
IBM design thinking centers around user outcomes, multidisciplinary teams, and a continuous loop of observe, reflect, and make.
-
•
The Hills framework sets clear, outcome-focused goals to align teams and avoid internal conflict.
-
•
Playbacks provide a safe space for critique where hierarchy is set aside to focus on doing right by users.
-
•
Sponsor Users programs connect design teams directly to real clients for co-design and feedback.
-
•
The IBM design language promotes system unity but allows teams creative freedom, fostering cohesive yet diverse products.
-
•
Design research roles invite everyone in the organization to participate, expanding beyond traditional lab-bound models.
Notable Quotes
"Culture eats strategy for breakfast, but culture isn’t something you can just buy or transplant."
"Behavior over time is your culture; it’s how you choose to behave and incentivize others to behave."
"We review over 10,000 candidates and select less than 1% for hiring into the IBM design program."
"If you just throw new hires into cubeville, most of them would probably quit."
"We call everybody a designer on purpose to encourage branching out across disciplines."
"The studio is designed for whole teams to work together, not just the design team alone."
"Design thinking at IBM is not just for designers; it’s how we want all 380,000 people to think about problems."
"Playbacks are safe spaces where an intern can challenge a senior VP without hierarchy getting in the way."
"The IBM design language is about system unity instead of uniformity, so designers aren’t cookie cutters."
"None of this matters without outcomes; we design to make people’s days better, not just to design."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Creativity fuels design, design fuels innovation."
Dr. Karl JeffriesThe Science of Creativity for DesignOps
January 8, 2024
"There’s been a huge convergence because everybody’s got a mobile device now and expects a certain kind of experience."
Amy MarquezINVEST: Discussion
June 15, 2018
"Enterprise UX is still nascent—businesses worldwide are just beginning to figure out where UX fits."
Steve Portigal Chris Chapo Kelly Goto Christian RohrerDiscussion
May 13, 2015
"Constant communication is necessary; agreement emails can’t be one-and-done."
Alicia MootyDesign Staffing Models
September 30, 2021
"We may not have tech prowess but our sticky notes, card sorts, and test reports are our real superpowers."
Ana Maria Montero Barrantes Aditi Dhar Michelle Kaplan Nate Osborne Matt LaurenceThe Authentic UX Talent Show
January 8, 2024
"Field usability testing showed stakeholders immediately how much value UX can add by catching issues before deployment."
Lada Gorlenko Sharbani Dhar Sébastien Malo Rob Mitzel Ivana Ng Michal Anne RogondinoTheme 1: Discussion
January 8, 2024
"The legacy of folders and nested structures causes real problems in finding research and scaling repositories."
Sofia QuinteroThe Product Philosophy Behind EnjoyHQ
March 10, 2021
"When things start to go bad, we’re going to pull the plug on it immediately—that helps build trust."
Laura KleinUnique challenges of innovation in enterprises
April 23, 2020
"Typically, data analytics teams are big and well-funded, while UX research teams are smaller and struggle for resources."
Andrew MichaelBuilding a Product Insights Team
March 10, 2022
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
How might activism in the tech industry evolve given today's power imbalances among AI corporations?
What are some signs or 'weak signals' that designers can follow when seeking new career directions?
Why is it expensive and complicated to design AI-powered UX across different platforms like Slack, Teams, and Claude?