Staying on Target with
IBM Design Thinking & Lean UX
Ariadna Font Llitjós, PhD
UX Lead and Development Manager
@quicola #designthinking #leanux @ibmdesign
InfoSphere Data Explorer, Big Data

Acquisition
June 2012 (TOB - January 2013)
Vivisimo
Company size 120
Engineering size 30
Cross-functional team size 4
Enterprise search
InfoSphere Data Explorer :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
IBM, Big Data
430,000
40+
10
Big Data exploration &
visualization
2

Focused vision and target
vs.
Overstimulating environment
& developing market
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IBM Design Thinking
to the rescue
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“Designers [...] don't try to search for a solution until they
have determined the real problem, and even then,
instead of solving that problem, they stop to consider a
wide range of potential solutions.
Only then will they finally converge upon their proposal.
This process is called ‘design thinking.’”
— Don Norman
“Rethinking Design Thinking” Core77, 19 March, 2013
InfoSphere Data Explorer :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
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“Designers [...] don't try to search for a solution until they
have determined the real problem, and even then,
instead of solving that problem, they stop to consider a
wide range of potential solutions.
Only then will they finally converge upon their proposal.
This process is called ‘design thinking.’”
— Don Norman
“Rethinking Design Thinking” Core77, 19 March, 2013
InfoSphere Data Explorer :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
8

“Designers [...] don't try to search for a solution until they
have determined the real problem, and even then,
instead of solving that problem, they stop to consider a
wide range of potential solutions.
Only then will they finally converge upon their proposal.
This process is called ‘design thinking.’”
— Don Norman
“Rethinking Design Thinking” Core77, 19 March, 2013
InfoSphere Data Explorer :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
9

“Designers [...] don't try to search for a solution until they
have determined the real problem, and even then,
instead of solving that problem, they stop to consider a
wide range of potential solutions.
Only then will they finally converge upon their proposal.
This process is called ‘design thinking.’”
— Don Norman
“Rethinking Design Thinking” Core77, 19 March, 2013
InfoSphere Data Explorer :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
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IBM Design Thinking is about
creating great experiences for our users.
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This is not a user experience
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This is a user experience

PRODUCT
UX
SERVER
UI
DATA CENTER
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PRODUCT
PRODUCT
UX
UX
SERVER
UI
DATA CENTER
SERVER
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UI
DATA CENTER
15

“Good design is good business.”
— Thomas Watson Jr.
Chief Executive Officer, 1973
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IBM Design Thinking: Scaling great design
Key building blocks for consistently great design outcomes
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IBM Design Thinking: Scaling great design
Key building blocks for consistently great design outcomes
Sponsor Clients/Users
Continuous engagement with people
in target roles and industry domains
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IBM Design Thinking: Scaling great design
Key building blocks for consistently great design outcomes
Sponsor Clients/Users
Continuous engagement with people
in target roles and industry domains
Release Hills
Focused investment,
empowered teams
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3 Release Hills focus and empower teams
Less micro-management and more iteration
A Release Hill captures the Commander’s intent
“a framework for freedom to act”
Example of a Release Hill:
“A business user should be able to
create and start using a process
application in less than 60 seconds”
IBM Designcamp :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
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IBM Design Thinking: Scaling great design
Key building blocks for consistently great design outcomes
Sponsor Clients/Users
Continuous engagement with people
in target roles and industry domains
Release Hills
Focused investment,
empowered teams
InfoSphere Data Explorer :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
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IBM Design Thinking: Scaling great design
Key building blocks for consistently great design outcomes
Sponsor Clients/Users
Continuous engagement with people
in target roles and industry domains
Playbacks
Relentless focus on user value and experience
throughout the development process
• Story-driven milestones led by users
• Playback Zero: Align on product vision before coding
• Interim Playbacks: Demo stories in executable code
Release Hills
Focused investment,
empowered teams
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Demo features & functionality
vs.
Demo experience as a narrative
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Quotes from Playback 1
“I’d love to have you present this to the sales teams the same way,
it tells the entire story...”
— Manuel Corniel, WW Sales Exec
Big Data, Data explorer
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Quotes from Playback 1
“To me it’s like nirvana, you’re getting a nonmediated demo (directly from the user).”
— Charlie Hill, CTO Design
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IBM Design Thinking: Scaling great design
Key building blocks for consistently great design outcomes
Sponsor Clients/Users
Continuous engagement with people
in target roles and industry domains
Playbacks
Relentless focus on user value and experience
throughout the development process
• Story-driven milestones led by users
• Playback Zero: Align on product vision before coding
• Interim Playbacks: Demo stories in executable code
Release Hills
Focused investment,
empowered teams
InfoSphere Data Explorer :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
23

IBM Design Thinking: Scaling great design
Key building blocks for consistently great design outcomes
Sponsor Clients/Users
Continuous engagement with people
in target roles and industry domains
Playbacks
Relentless focus on user value and experience
throughout the development process
• Story-driven milestones led by users
• Playback Zero: Align on product vision before coding
• Interim Playbacks: Demo stories in executable code
Release Hills
Focused investment,
empowered teams
Wiki-based Release Documents
Efficient cross-functional collaboration
around peer-reviewed artifacts
Product
Management
InfoSphere Data Explorer :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
Engineering
Design
23

personas
IBM Designcamp :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
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personas
user stories & interactions
IBM Designcamp :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
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personas
user stories & interactions
sketches
IBM Designcamp :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
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personas
user stories & interactions
visual
prototypes
IBM Designcamp :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
sketches
24

personas
user stories & interactions
field testing
visual
prototypes
IBM Designcamp :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
sketches
24

personas
user stories & interactions
release
blueprint
field testing
visual
prototypes
IBM Designcamp :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
sketches
24

IBM Design Thinking: Scaling great design
Key building blocks for consistently great design outcomes
Sponsor Clients/Users
Continuous engagement with people
in target roles and industry domains
Playbacks
Relentless focus on user value and experience
throughout the development process
• Story-driven milestones led by users
• Playback Zero: Align on product vision before coding
• Interim Playbacks: Demo stories in executable code
Release Hills
Focused investment,
empowered teams
Wiki-based Release Documents
Efficient cross-functional collaboration
around peer-reviewed artifacts
Product
Management
InfoSphere Data Explorer :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
Engineering
Design
25

IBM Design Thinking: Scaling great design
Key building blocks for consistently great design outcomes
Sponsor Clients/Users
Continuous engagement with people
in target roles and industry domains
Playbacks
Relentless focus on user value and experience
throughout the development process
• Story-driven milestones led by users
• Playback Zero: Align on product vision before coding
• Interim Playbacks: Demo stories in executable code
Release Hills
Focused investment,
empowered teams
Wiki-based Release Documents
Efficient cross-functional collaboration
around peer-reviewed artifacts
IBM Design
Thinking
Metrics
Visibility into
objective
operational data
Organization
data
Skills ratios
1:9
Design team skills data
Release
Blueprint URL
Release Hills
Lead Users
Product
Management
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Engineering
Design
Dependencies
25

Where were we?
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What else changed?
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Colocated team
vs.
Distributed team
(2/10 remote devs - still more colocated than most IBM teams)
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Non-dedicated design resources
vs.
Dedicated design resources
(2 UX designers, 2 front-end devs / 3 app devs, 3 backend devs)
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Access to end users
vs.
Sponsor clients and users
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Dev
UX
PM
vs.
Dev UX PM
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Lean UX Principles
• Design Thinking
• User-centric design and development
• Cross-functional team
• Maximize learning
• Just-in-time (minimize waste)
• Validate and iterate
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Things that remained the same
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Agile & Lean practices for over 5 years
• startup culture
• XP practices (continuous integration, peer reviews, unit tests, pair
programming, ...)
• design studios (collaborative design workshops)
• Kanban
• stories
• daily standups
• demos
• retrospectives
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Design and development flow
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1. Brainstorm and scope as a team
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2. Workflow and creating epics
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3. Breaking epics down to stories that can be designed / implemented
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4. Design, validate, implement, polish design
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5. One day in the Pittsburgh Big Data lab...
Designers and
developers at work
Team daily standup
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6. Designer shares design and gets feedback from Dev
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7. Dev works on implementing the design
ARIADNA FONT | @QUICOLA @IBMDESIGN @LEANUX

8. Dev proudly shows the implementation with the final design to designer
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Key aspects
One team with shared core values
Daily high-bandwidth communication
Iterate - don’t let perfection be the enemy of good
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What about outcomes?
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Before...
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Now
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Now
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Now
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Responsive design (mobile friendly)
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Responsive design (mobile friendly)
InfoSphere Data Explorer :: IBM Confidential :: ©2013 IBM Corporation
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InfoSphere Data Explorer 9.0
1st Signature Product released!
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Can’t dictate
great outcomes

PROCESS

PROCESS
Not a new way of acting, a new way of thinking

Can prepare for
great outcomes

June 2012
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We managed to bring IBM along and
leverage IBM’s channels
October 2013
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IBM Design Thinking
61

IBM Design Thinking
&
Lean UX
62

Thanks!
@quicola #designthinking #leanux @ibmdesign
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References
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Engineering and coding practices
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