Social Business Journal, Volume 6: Inclusive Design in a Cognitive Era

The Social Business Journal 2015 Vol. 6
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The traditional workplace, as we’ve known it, no longer exists. The explosion of social, mobile and cloud technologies has fundamentally
changed the way we work—and more changes are coming fast. New employee behaviors are challenging traditional communication and
collaboration processes, as more and more employees work remotely and millennials overtake the workforce.
Business Leaders like IBM Chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty envisions an age “where our oceans of unstructured data become meaningful
thanks to the power of digital learning, and where business processes become increasingly cognitive.”
So…with these fast moving realities upon us, we’re answering two important questions in this Social Business Journal…
In this Social Business Journal you’ll gain insight into these trends through the lens of Mary Elizabeth (M.E.) Miller and Duncan Hopkins from
IBM. Duncan Hopkins is a Senior Design Team Lead, IBM Design, Enterprise Social Solutions and M.E. Miller is an IBM Verse UX Designer.
In a conversational format captured on our podcast channel, M.E. and Duncan describe how they leverage IBM Design Thinking to design
and develop enterprise applications like IBM Verse. They describe what IBM Design Thinking is, how they ensure that their designs are
accessible to anyone regardless of age or ability, how IBM Design Thinking has been applied to IBM Verse, and how it can be applied to
solve myriad problems in business. Finally, you'll also learn about IBM Verse itself, and how this new cloud-based enterprise email solution
learns your behaviors and adapts to the way you work--a harbinger of the “cognitive era.”
Bernie Borges
CEO, Find and Convert
Producer, Social Business Engine

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Bryan Jones
Chances are that today, before you opened this journal, you’ve
already checked your email dozens of times, spent unproductive
time trying to figure out which of the emails in your inbox
required (and deserved) your immediate attention, and maybe a
few minutes more digging into schedules to see when members
of your team would be available for a meeting, not to mention
looking for files you’ll need for that meeting.
How much more productive would your day be if you didn’t have
to do any of those things?
This is a common problem in the workplace. M.E. and Duncan–
and their colleagues at IBM–set out to tackle this problem with
IBM Verse.
-- Duncan Hopkins

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Bryan Jones
So much has changed since 1973, when Thomas Watson Jr. said,
“Good design is good business.” But at IBM, the emphasis on
design is stronger than ever. Today, IBM designers follow the
motto, “Works the Same. Works Together. Works for Me.”
Duncan: “Good design is a great experience for everybody.
Consumer applications today really influence what enterprise
users expect from our software. People go home and use all kinds
of different apps on their computers, laptops, tablets, phones and
they’re so used to this great experience. That really influences
how the enterprise is adapting and designing software for this
new workforce, and it’s extremely important.”
Duncan: “And it shouldn’t be a different experience when going
from your home to your car, to your work. Those should all be
similarly delightful experiences. We should all love using the
software that we work with – and especially in the work
environment, where we have to use that software eight hours a
day or so. You want to be able to have a great experience on the
tools and applications that allow you to do your work.”
-- Duncan Hopkins

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By 2012, before either Duncan or M.E. had joined IBM, more than
a decade of acquisitions had substantially increased IBM’s global
footprint. It was an engineering titan, with 33 coders for every
designer.
IBM saw that if it was going to substantially grow its market
presence, it needed to focus on how clients experienced their
software products.
That would require shifting the balance, to a considerable
degree, back from engineering to design. Specifically, on a
number of its strategic projects IBM decided to change the ratio
of designers to coders from 1:33 to 1:8. To support that effort,
IBM committed to creating over 25 IBM Studios and hiring 1,000
more designers (including Duncan and M.E.) over a five-year
period.
- Jeff Schick, General Manager, Enterprise Solutions

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IBM is reinventing enterprise email with a new social collaboration
offering that uses built-in analytics to give individuals a new way
to converse, find the right people and information fast, and get
work done. IBM Verse stems from the company’s investment in
design innovation and brings together its leading cloud, analytics,
social and security platforms to transform the future of work.
M.E.: “It is extremely important that we improve the ways that we
collaborate across these different areas with one another. We are
recreating the places we work to make that possible. For
example, we have white boards that you can slide and easily take
down to reconfigure a room. Almost all of our spaces are open,
collaborative spaces.
“We have put in a lot of effort with our studios. Duncan and I are
here in IBM Studios Austin, which was our first official IBM
product design studio. Now we’re building studios across the
globe, and we’ve reached about 25 studios worldwide. We’re
hiring great talent and we’re placing the focus on people and our
day-to-day work. And we’re humanizing the enterprise in the
process.”
-– Maria Winans, CMO, IBM WW Commerce and Social Marketing

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But hiring more designers (people) and building new studios
(places) was not enough to drive the desired outcomes. The goal
is not only to transform IBM's product portfolio to focus on user
experience, but also to transform the culture at IBM for the long
term. To succeed, one more critical ingredient is required: a new
set of practices. So IBM developed IBM Design Thinking, a
methodology for leveraging design thinking at an unprecedented
scale. These practices would help all IBMers (not only designers)
work together more effectively to achieve user-centered
outcomes in the IBM product portfolio.
To help establish new, unifying practices, IBM consulted with
experts from Ideo and the Stanford University Institute of Design,
iterated on existing design thinking practices, and ultimately
created a new problem solving methodology uniquely suited to
the global enterprise: IBM Design Thinking.
-- M.E. Miller

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Design thinking is an established methodology of human-
centered design with roots that go back to the 1970s and ‘80s. At
its core, the Stanford University Institute of Design Thinking
model has five modules.
1. Empathize
2. Define
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Test
Bryan Jones
To make design thinking work at IBM at scale, some adaptation
was necessary. The five modules of the Stanford University
Institute of Design Thinking model were condensed to four:
1. Understand
2. Explore
3. Prototype
4. Evaluate
While this problem solving model works well for creating product
and service experiences when you're on a relatively small, co-
located team, it doesn’t address two of IBMs major concerns: 1)
delivering that experience to market; and 2) design collaboration
on a global scale.
-- M.E. Miller

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Three additional components were added.
1. Hills - User-centric statements that define the mission and
scope of a product release and serve to focus the design and
development work on desired market outcomes.
2. Sponsor Users - Users who help a team surface the problems
solved by Hills. Because Sponsor Users represent these
problems, they are critical in validating solutions throughout
the stages of envisioning, designing and implementing.
3. Playbacks - Milestones that align teams, stakeholders, and
clients around scenarios that demonstrate the value of an
offering. Playbacks enable teams to capture feedback and
ideas from stakeholders, check progress against Hills, review
designs, and communicate the current state of work.
-- Scott Souder, Program Director & Sr. Product Manager, IBM
Verse

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M.E.: “[We] have practices that we follow, and they revolve
around the methodology of IBM Design Thinking. That
methodology is all about collaboration across three core
disciplines. With what we do in software, [those three disciplines
are] design, development and product management.
“And within IBM Design Thinking we’re following [several] core
practices. We hope to define the goals and missions with what we
call 'Hills.' We also work one-on-one with Sponsor Users, so that
when we envision the user experience, we get direct feedback
from our end users throughout our process. Another core practice
is doing Playbacks with our stakeholders and with our Sponsor
Users, so that we make sure that we’re aligned and we’re always
following the mission of our Hills, which we define in the
beginning.
“This is a snapshot of our IBM Design Thinking methodology, and
we're implementing it across all our product teams to improve
how we collaborate globally.
“[It is] about following an iterative process where you are
constantly trying to understand, ideate, prototype, and evaluate.
And you are constantly doing any of those four phases in any kind
of order. What makes IBM Design Thinking unique [from non-IBM
design thinking] is the inclusion of ‘Hills’, ‘Sponsor Users’ and
‘Playbacks.’ The reason why we have implemented this within
IBM Design Thinking is so that we can do it at scale.”
Duncan: “Yes, and right now I think we’re doing Design Thinking
at a scale that no one has attempted at this point. We’re probably
the largest design team globally.”
In addition to the insights provided by M.E. and Duncan,
supporting information is provided in the Forrester Case Study:
IBM Builds A Design-Driven Culture At Scale to help flesh out the
story of how IBM came to value and implement inclusive design
at scale.
-- Duncan Hopkins

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Inclusive design is about designing for anyone, regardless of age
or ability. It is a core principle of IBM Design Thinking; an
opportunity to reach and serve all users. There are more than a
billion people in the world living with a disability. IBM views
Inclusive Design – incorporating a billion people in their design
process from the outset – as not only the right thing to do, but as
an important market opportunity. For IBM, it would be
unthinkable to not include users with disabilities in the design
process.
M.E.: “If you don’t design for accessibility, and you don’t design
inclusively for these varying disabilities, the tool that you create
will prevent people from being able to do their job and so it
becomes an issue with the tool and not the person’s ability. So,
thinking about all these things through the design process
directly relates to a person’s ability to really be efficient and do
their job correctly.
“Our approach to accessibility is just like any other kind of design
problem. I’ve found that where you really have to start is by
understanding the user, and developing empathy for the user,
which is all a part of IBM Design Thinking. It’s our goal at IBM
Design to do that all the way from the beginning of the process.
So the idea is that you are constantly incorporating accessibility
into your designs and I’m constantly planning for it and that it’s
just a part of the design process that you do every day.

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“There are four major disabilities that we look at, and in IBM
Verse in particular we focus on two: vision and physical
disabilities. The other two major types of disabilities are cognitive
and hearing. We don’t incorporate much sound within our IBM
Verse UI, so our focus has mostly been on vision and physical
disabilities.
“There can be a range of disabilities. So, for vision you could
have somebody that’s color blind, or you could have somebody
that’s completely blind, or perhaps someone who has low vision.
And there are different types of assistive technologies that
people use to work with these disabilities. Some people with low
vision might zoom their screen to 200%; others might use a high
contrast mode.
“The whole process [involves] understanding what assistive
technologies people are using, how they’re using them, and how
your design works with that. Then, we focus on creating a design
that will work in all of these different scenarios, and we ensure
that it’s a good experience in all of those cases. And it doesn’t
mean that we create a separate design. We create a design that
meets all of those needs in one area.
-- M.E. Miller

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-- M.E. Miller
“[For example,] as a UX designer, what’s really important to think
about is how a keyboard user would be using the user interface.
A keyboard user could be… a blind user, but it could also be
somebody with a physical disability. So, they have full vision and
are able to view the UI but are not able to use a mouse. They are
using the keyboard to navigate the UI. And as you could imagine,
you need to design that experience for a keyboard user, the same
as you have to design an experience for a mouse user. And it just
needs to be considered at the same time, which is why we’re
trying to bake accessibility into the process rather than bolting it
on at the end. That way, all of these concerns are incorporated
from the outset, and the final design works for everyone.
“And another thing that we have been doing recently is baking it
into our IBM Design Language... which means incorporating
accessibility into the visuals.”

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Duncan: “It’s one interface. So when you use the interface, you
don’t have to turn on anything special to use the interface for
accessibility. We try to make it a seamless experience, and it’s not
an easy thing to do. But the goal is to design the product so that
it’s visually pleasing and esthetically usable by everybody – and to
take in all the considerations throughout the process. So I give
kudos to M.E. and our entire IBM team that have been working
on this, because it’s an extremely important problem to solve and
it means a lot to everybody here.”
M.E.: “When I first came here, I was part of an IBM Design boot
camp for new hires coming right out of college. During that time,
we had a week where we focused on accessibility, and we
brought in IBM's accessibility experts to talk about what
accessibility means to design.
“The leaders of this workshop, themselves, were disabled. And
so, first-hand, I got to see how somebody uses a screen reader on
their laptop and the speed in which they read, and also how they
interact with the voice over on their cell phone. It was extremely
impactful to experience that. I was like, ‘WOW how could you
ever be able to do anything just using the screen reader?’ I had
never experienced that and it’s always stuck with me.
“When I talk about accessibility with designers, I always
recommend that they look at YouTube videos of people using
assistive technologies and understand how that impacts the user
experience with viewing a UI or going through a UI.
“At IBM, we’re constantly improving the educational series
around accessibility. We have recently been doing an activity
where the new hires wear goggles that augment and change their
vision, affecting the way they are able to see the screen. Being
able to see other people experiencing the UI helps to put you
into the shoes of a person with low vision or a different type of
disability. That experience is extremely impactful.”
Duncan: “Besides [training our new hires], we’re also, within our
team, doing continual accessibility training–and that’s not just for
the designers. We’re opening it up to developers and managers
and anybody, so that everyone can experience and understand
what it really means to use these interfaces and how important it
is to be inclusive in our design approach.”

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M.E.: “Accessibility must be designed into enterprise apps so that
the app is not an obstacle to a user’s productivity.
“Every clickable element in IBM Verse can be accessed via the
keyboard. This is important for users that might have difficulty
using a mouse, because it insures that a mouse is not needed to
navigate the Verse User Interface. Our UX designers on the Verse
Team include the ease of keyboard navigation within their initial
design specs.
“Within the Verse user interface, we never use color as the only
method to convey information. This is important for users who are
color blind or have low vision. If there are different states for
icons (for example, having a button change when a user hovers
their mouse over it), we don’t only use color as the visual indicator
of that state change. Instead, we design the icon to have a
change in shape, so that all users can easily see the state change.
When scanning over a page, this makes it easier for all users to
see the differences.
“Our designers, technical writers, and developers all work
together to define clear labels for WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility
Initiative – Accessible Rich Internet Applications). These labels are
coded so that users who read their emails by listening to a screen
reader have the same experience as users that read their emails
by observing the UI. Our designers consider what the user
experience would be if you were hearing the UI vs. seeing the UI,
and it is designed for alerts or loading messages that notify the
user of what is occurring on the page.”
-- Duncan Hopkins

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What if email, enterprise social, collaboration, and communication
tools were all brought together into one elegant application
informed by cognitive technology to put the important information,
schedules, contacts and emails right at your fingertips, and was
designed – from the start – to work the same way for abled and
disabled users alike?
Creating that application was, in a nutshell, the charge given to the
people behind IBM Verse.
-- Duncan Hopkins

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You can’t discuss Verse without talking about email, because Verse has reimagined email, viewing it as a tool to keep you productive
rather than a large filing system you need to dig through whenever you need something. By analyzing how you use email, Verse surfaces
the emails that are most important to you, as well as the people with whom you connect and collaborate the most. No more digging. They
are all right there. As the first email application with faceted search, Verse helps you find the emails you need in an instant. It’s no longer
about the email. It’s about the person.
Duncan: “A lot of people think (Verse is) just a mail application, but it’s a lot more than that. It’s a software application that brings together
mail and social analytics into a single collaborative environment. It has some built in analytics that we use to bring to the surface what is
important to you as a user.
“We can talk about this being cognitive, but at a high level it is really about knowing
what is important to you as a user and what you need to focus on during the day to
get your work done. That could be things you need as far as action items you’ve got
going on, meetings that you are going to attend, what is going to be important to
that meeting, who are the right people to invite, what are the files that you need for
that meeting? And, making it a better work experience for the user and a new way to
work as part of this collaborative effort within the environment.”
M.E.: “The feedback that we’ve been getting about Verse is that it is a much simpler because of our elegant interface.
“One thing that we’ve done with IBM Verse that’s pretty unique is implemented a faceted search which is a really nice user experience
because it helps people find their email within seconds.”

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The IBM Verse website emphasizes three ways that Verse
changes the way we work.
1. “Email that understands you”
2. “Less clutter, more clarity”
3. “Connecting me to we”
As an application built in the Cognitive Era for a workforce
composed increasingly of social natives for whom collaboration is
the norm and sitting in silos is rapidly disappearing, Verse uses
cognitive technologies to remove barriers to productivity.
By bringing email, social, collaboration, and analytics seamlessly
to your screen, regardless of device, Verse optimizes
engagement and continuity.
And by including individuals with disabilities in the design
thinking from day one, and using a human-centered design
methodology, Verse makes the workplace more humane.
-- Omar Davison & Maurice Teeuwe, IBM Connections Cloud
Technical Sales Leads, Europe

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IBM has created a website to introduce people and organizations – not just for those within IBM – to its IBM Design Language and
core principles. Another useful resource is the IBM Accessibility YouTube video called Inclusion by Design. The video makes clear that,
even though M.E. Miller and the other speakers in it are addressing software design, inclusive design can be applied to every aspect
of your organization where design happens. Instead of locking people out, we can express our own innate humanity by inviting
everyone in through inclusive design.
-- Maria Winans, CMO, IBM WW Commerce and Social Marketing
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