Design Strategy & Research
Joe has spent about half of his non-leadership career as a researcher. As a leader, he has remained passionate about data collection and how objective, qualitative data can be utilized in combination with quantitative data collected by product instrumentation and marketing surveys. Research informs strategy, and vice-versa.
At IBM, Joe worked with researchers to create unique artifacts to drive business value with Personas and re-think product Roadmaps through the lens of users. Joe also led the creation of a Design Strategist role and commissioned a Design Strategy Guide; addressing the lack of Design Strategy from the top-down and bottom-up.
Design Strategy Practice
Role
Design Strategy Director
Objective
Increase the impact of the Hybrid Cloud Design Organization, consisting of over 400 designers, through tools and methods that drove a new type of design artifacts.
Context
Design Strategy was focused on ensuring that designers are the best possible partners to Marketing, Sales, Development, Support, and Product Management.
Outcome
With over 20 designers actively contributing to the Design Strategy Guild, there was a distributed approach to generating artifacts and adding positions to the design career ladder.
Design Strategy Guide
Role
Design Strategy Director
Objective
Provide guidance to Designers in order to better understand and integrate with IBM. By speaking the same language, Designers could become better partners to non-Designers.
Context
Product Managers, Developers, and Marketing teams had challenges in understanding what Product Designers did. The reverse was also true, so a guide was written to help Designers understand their role in the business.
Outcome
By understanding the language, competition, and how their contributions are measured, designers were better equipped to collaborate meaningfully with non-designers at scale.
Project Planning
Role
Design Director
Objective
Create a scalable and sustainable approach to delivering Design with increased clarity and repeatability.
Context
Development and Product Management had difficulty in understanding how Designer outputs would align with the development lifecycle.
Outcome
Expectations were set for timing and outcomes associated with the Understand, Explore, and Prototype phases of a typical design effort. Clarity of process was achieved for non-design audiences.
Experience-Based Roadmaps
Role
Design Director
Objective
Architect a workshop for roadmap creation that takes the outputs from Design Thinking activities and converts them into clear and actionable decision points for executives.
Context
Technical roadmaps are often focused on features and capabilities. Internal-facing roadmaps tend to lack context and clarity of tradeoffs for leadership.
Outcome
Reusable planning and communication templates for prioritization, driving alignment, and fostering a conversation about how R&D can deliver on the business's priorities.
Platform Audit & Reference Architecture
Role
Design Principal
Objective
Establish criteria and evaluate the landscape of multi-product SaaS platforms. Identify patterns and leverage them for reference designs.
Context
The client had recently acquired several complimentary offerings and was looking to integrate them into a unified platform.
Outcome
Rigorous competitive and comparative research. A combination of information architecture and modular design to inform future release planning.
User Journey & Experience Mapping
Role
Design Director
Objective
Illustrate how Personas experience products and interact with the Support and Advocacy organizations. Drive empathy for users across the organization.
Context
Personas are stellar artifacts to drive empathy but they are challenging to directly connect to outcomes.
Outcome
Unique visualizations that show the journey of a Persona as they interact with applications and the IBM ecosystem. A more dynamic set of artifacts to represent users.
Actionable Personas
Role
Design Director
Objective
Provide valuable context, informed by data, to increase the utility of Personas. Explore hypotheses tied to how Personas work with one another and how they would respond to roadmap decisions.
Context
Personas aren’t typically placed into scenarios that reflect their likely responses to product or roadmap decisions.
Outcome
Conversations were provoked that connected various parts of the business, driving alignment. Funding to support additional user and buyer research was increased.
Lightweight Personas
Role
Design Principal
Objective
Identify what level of detail is enough to drive empathy with Personas but isn’t too detailed for internal audiences.
Context
Personas can be role-based or too abstract to make business decisions with. How are Personas ‘people, too?’
Outcome
A balance of psychographic and demographic data to create a well-formed picture of a Persona.