Written by Dan Benedict, photos by Nick Thomsen and courtesy of Dan Benedict
I officially started my position at IBM on August 1. After a long summer break, I’ve settled in and gone through a trial-by-fire. After graduation, my fiancé and I moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She transferred to a local office for her Interior Design firm [she’s a SCAD alumnus as well] and I took a couple of months to relax.
We took time to polish our apartment design; it’s something she’s very passionate about and I’m happy to have her around for it. While we scoured the area for furniture and linens, we also explored the amazing Maker community here in North Carolina.
Around the Research Triangle Park, Raleigh’s tech hub, there are several groups dedicated to design, collaboration and technology. Our favorite is the Forge Initiative. The people there work hard to teach the community about Physical Computing, CAD software, 3D printing, laser cutting
I was lucky enough to be hired back to IBM after completing a year-long internship. I work for “Design 2 Deliver” an IBM-facing international design group. We have team members in North America, Singapore, Spain, Brazil and France. We offer a wide portfolio of deliverables, everything from creating websites, logos and instructional videos. It’s a great position with a lot of opportunities to learn new design skills. But, our most important offering and role is to advocate for Design Thinking.
At SCAD, I learned the UX methodology: Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver. In Contextual Research Methods I learned the IDEO process: Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation. IBM’s flavor of Design thinking is similar to these, but they use a unique language that helps keep “IBM
At SCAD, it’s design central where creatives of one kind or another work together. At IBM, I’m working alongside software engineers, Business Managers, sales teams and operations specialists. People who may only know of Design Thinking by name, not by practice. Our role is bridging the gap in skills and education, this is our most challenging job.
My team caught me off-guard by bringing me to back to back workshops after I started. First, we took on the challenge of conducting a design sprint. In just five days, a team of eleven set out to map an experience, decide where to apply human-centered design, sketch out solutions and then prototype and test the best option. My co-worker was tasked with facilitating, so he guided the clients through designing a new feature for an existing product. I was brought on to create a high fidelity prototype. While the clients provided expertise and opportunities, our design team was able to provide
The next week we did a second workshop. It was a four-day, rapid workflow involving over 30 individuals from all across the globe. Working remotely, we met each day through video calls to talk to Subject Matter Experts, map out the needs and goals of the team and rapidly make decisions to lay out the future of a product offering. This was a unique challenge since the deliverable wasn’t an interface or graphic. It was something that only the team of 30 managers and experts could make, but they needed Design Thinking to get it done. Over the four days, Design 2 Deliver facilitated a workshop by laying out frameworks, capturing insights and notes, mapping journey’s and attempting to guide questions towards their high-level goal. It was another whirlwind, but the effort paid off just in time to catch the eye of the New York Times.
Both sessions were challenging. Design Thinking is ingrained in us at SCAD, but big business is still adopting it. My job is an amazing opportunity to show others how effective this workflow can be, to help them get inside the mind of their users and to identify specific needs that they can help soothe. However, to work with a group that isn’t used to that flow can be slow-going, it can take convincing and compromise.
In the end, everyone leaves the table having learned something like a new way of thinking, a skill or talent they didn’t know they had or finding that a tool doesn’t apply in certain situations. It’s nice to be in an environment where learning is occurring whether it’s robotics at a community makerspace or design thinking in a virtual boardroom.
