Summary
More than 50 years ago, Thomas Watson Jr., the second President of IBM declared, “Good design is good business”. Today, the global company continues to operate on the belief that human experiences drive business. Doug Powell, Distinguished Designer at IBM, will expose what it means to practice design at the global tech company, exploring the inner workings of the largest UX design operation in the world. He will also elaborate on a new Forrester Research study examining the value of design and the design thinking practice at IBM.
Key Insights
-
•
Design leadership is shifting from earning a seat at the table to proving design’s strategic business value.
-
•
IBM employs a decentralized design model with 1,800 formally trained designers embedded in 25 semi-autonomous businesses.
-
•
Design thinking is taught to everyone at IBM, with over 140,000 employees trained via an online platform since 2016.
-
•
Cross-disciplinary collaboration around design thinking significantly improves team alignment and agility.
-
•
Measuring design impact requires a multi-metric approach including designer-to-developer ratios, seniority balance, attrition, and user sentiment.
-
•
Business leaders at IBM are data-driven, competitive, and have a finely tuned bullshit meter, requiring clear and evidence-based communication.
-
•
A 2018 Forrester study found teams with the right design conditions deliver 2x faster to market and 300% ROI.
-
•
Strong relationships between design leaders and business leaders accelerate executive buy-in and resource investment.
-
•
Diversity is a critical design ops challenge as teams must reflect the diverse users they serve to create effective experiences.
-
•
IBM’s App Connect team turned complex workflows into intuitive apps, winning the iF Design Award and validating IBM's design investments.
Notable Quotes
"We are truly in a golden age for our profession."
"Design thinking is for everybody. It’s collaborative, inclusive, and cross-disciplinary."
"Everything is a prototype."
"Business leaders are super busy, data-driven, competitive, and have a finely tuned bullshit meter."
"When the whole team is trained in design thinking, they are measurably more aligned, more efficient, and more agile."
"The user experience will allow us to win."
"There’s no faking it with this crowd."
"We have over 140,000 IBMers who’ve completed design thinking online training."
"Diversity is beyond just the right thing to do. Our teams must reflect the world we’re designing for."
"Good design is good business."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"If you’re doing research with people with disabilities, consider using the Accessible Usability Scale to get more accurate insights."
Sam ProulxSUS: A System Unusable for Twenty Percent of the Population
December 9, 2021
"Design Ops in government requires a lot of diplomacy – it’s about managing relationships and stakeholder expectations."
Michael LandEstablishing Design Operations in Government
February 18, 2021
"VOC wasn’t a replacement for user research, but an enhancer that captured nuggets researchers might miss during discovery."
Shipra KayanHow we Built a VoC (Voice of the Customer) Practice at Upwork from the Ground Up
September 30, 2021
"Why don’t we do what we do for users but apply it to our own careers? Absolutely nutty, right? So we did."
Ian SwinsonDesigning and Driving UX Careers
June 8, 2016
"Emotional intelligence is key to navigating situations with senior leaders multiple grades above you."
Isaac HeyveldExpand DesignOps Leadership as a Chief of Staff
September 8, 2022
"Controls like insurance qualifiers and legal agreements were necessary guardrails for this new way of working."
Amy EvansHow to Create Change
September 25, 2024
"Super speed means enabling rapid onboarding by centralizing and streamlining a previously disparate process."
Kate Koch Prateek KalliFlex Your Super Powers: When a Design Ops Team Scales to Power CX
September 30, 2021
"The higher up you are in an organization, the more distorted your reality is likely to be."
Dave GrayLiminal Thinking: Sense-making for systems in large organizations
May 14, 2015
"Curation is super important, but also super hard."
Matt DuignanAtomizing Research: Trend or Trap
March 30, 2020
