Measuring What Matters
Summary
Key Insights
-
•
IBM’s CIO design team represents just 1% of the IT org yet supports UX for 385,000 employees across the whole company.
-
•
Over half of IBMers have been with the company less than five years, adding urgency to delivering great onboarding and daily experiences.
-
•
About 30% of IBM employees work remotely or offsite, increasing reliance on intuitive, well-integrated digital tools.
-
•
The team follows a mission to lead with design, engineer with excellence, deepen agile practices, and secure the enterprise.
-
•
Kristen’s team moved from reactive user research to building proactive, predictive capabilities by aggregating decades of experience data.
-
•
Measurement shifted from isolated metrics like NPS to a holistic scorecard including ease of use, capability, and goal completion.
-
•
A voice of the employee continuous feedback tool replaced large, infrequent surveys to capture real-time user sentiment.
-
•
Data-driven decisions led to major redesigns of IBM’s employee directory, help system, and corporate intranet, each achieving significant user appreciation.
-
•
Measurement can be challenging due to resistance and attempts to game survey responses, underscoring the need for data integrity.
-
•
Embracing design ops chaos and continuous iteration is key to maturing UX capability in a large enterprise organization like IBM.
Notable Quotes
"This circle represents the size of IBM, 385,000 IBMers. The CIO team is only 3% of that, and our design team is just 1% of the CIO."
"We have about 5,000 new IBMers arriving every month, with high expectations and low tolerance for poor experiences."
"The state of IT is a daily reflection of what the company thinks and feels about its employees."
"You can't just jump to the top of the pyramid like Maslow’s hierarchy—you have to consider all the underlying layers supporting the experience."
"Fletcher Prevend took us to the next level by reporting design and user research directly into the CIO office—a huge differentiator."
"Every minute spent struggling with an IT system is a minute not spent delivering value for IBM and our clients."
"Before, we never really looked holistically at decades of UX data—now we use it to be proactive and avoid duplicative studies."
"We want to send fewer mailers but make them more impactful, using A/B testing to optimize open and click rates."
"Don’t try to control the data to fit your narrative—the goal is to let insights guide your decisions, not justify them."
"We’re the voice of the employee—we’re arbiters of truth, defenders of experience, and sometimes validators against manipulation."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Mastery is a core human motivator; people want to understand and feel competent in what they do."
Cheryl PlatzEmbrace Your Fun Factor: Game Development Best Practices for Product Design
January 9, 2026
"Don’t boil the ocean. Get small wins before you go for the big change."
Maria GiudiceBecoming a Changemaker by Leading with Design
March 29, 2023
"The variable sync tool we built is not a commercial product; it’s a utilitarian sync layer to overcome Figma’s limitations and connect design to engineering."
Ryan Matthew Alex KurchevDesignOps without Boundaries: Building More with What You Have
September 10, 2025
"As a Black woman, I can't bring my whole self to work, but I hope one day we will."
Jackie Velasquez-RossTalent Acquisition and Our Responsibility
June 16, 2020
"Don't be a pot plant, be a crab."
Dean BroadleyNot Black Enough to be White
January 8, 2024
"Businesses don’t democratize functions like finance or engineering; why research?"
Ari ZelmanowDark Side of Democratization
October 13, 2023
"One thing that sets high performers is psychological safety: do people feel safe to raise a flag when something’s not working?"
Alana Washington(Remote) Service Design: A Transformation Case Study
June 8, 2022
"Touch screens let blind users use physical spatial information in a way desktops never could."
Sam ProulxUnderstanding Screen Readers on Mobile: How And Why to Learn from Native Users
March 27, 2023
"Each conference theme acts like a mini conference exploring a deep aspect of designing at scale."
Uday GajendarTheme 1: Introduction
June 9, 2021
