The beginning...
In July 2023, I started a 12-month placement at IBM at Design Studio in Hursley, Winchester. In the beginning of my placement I was placed in the product, App Connect SaaS (Software-as-a-Service). In the product, we had a team of five: the Design Lead (and researcher), UX designer, Visual (UI) designer, a UX apprentice, and myself. Later on, the team expanded with two more UX designers.
In the first few weeks of my placement, it was mainly focused on getting to grips with the product domain as it was very technical; one of our user-personas being a engineer. To up-skill my domain knowledge I attended all of the team meetings, noting down anything I was unsure of (mainly domain, terminiology, or abbreviations) to ask my team outside the meeting. Additionally I took advantage of IBM’s online learning (Your Learning) which had thousands of courses. In preparation for tasks, I gathered credentials in Carbon Design (their design system), and the product domain knowledge for App Connect. Over the course of the year, I obtained badge credentials in Design Thinking: Practitioner, Co-creator, Team Essentials in AI, and Sustainability.
Confidence in Presenting
Presenting in industry can be various tasks; pitching ideas, sharing ideas for feedback, or sharing how far a project is in-front of a 50+ designers, developers and PMs. During my first 3 Months, I was presenting design handovers to engineers in meetings, building rapport and allowing for questions. I initially found this quite overwhelming as I feared not being able to answer questions whilst still growing my domain knowledge on the product, however my team were supportive and answered any questions if I did not know the answer. The more handover meetings I presented, I began to feel confident and I could hold these meetings by myself. I started to feel confident to jump in the deep end with workshops with SME's. I participated in Design Jam's which are a week set a side to participate in Enterprise Design Thinking with the whole product team to solve user issues, and focus our attention on what can be done now with the most affect. At the end of my placement, I achieved what I thought was the impossible, I presented in-front of the whole design studio the work I have completed over the year.
Design to Industry Standards
In the first month I mentioned to my team I was confident at using Figma, and the team asked me to practice turning UX wireframes, created by our UX designer, and designing them at high-fidelity.
At industry, they use an imbedded design library into Figma which allows designers to select pre-made components to make the visual process faster, and consistent. However, these are quite tricky to use and often take a lot of practice to fully understand how to make work it, especially with features like auto-layout. Additionally, it takes some time to learn IBM Design, implementing the appropriate size fonts, designing with an 2px grid and selecting the correct colour codes for the feature. My team were impressed with my ability to learn this quickly, and started assigning visual design work for me to take ownership of. In my second month, I was producing visual work that got published into the product software. During this time I learnt how to redline a document, which involves providing guidelines and relevant links and/or information to support the development team when implementing.
Industry skills in Software
As my role as Design Intern was mostly UX and Visual tasks, I did not use Adobe software however I did learn a lot about Figma, and how it is used in the industry.
IBM have a Carbon Library which is open-sourced, and downloadable to use in Figma. It contains pre-made components, text styles and colour codes. I had not used a library before this experience. In my own projects I had made every single component from scratch. There was a learning curve when trying to use complex components, sometimes a little tricky, but I got the hang of it - even helping other designers in studio towards the end. I even had the chance to design some new components, where my skills of creating from scratch came in handy. I learnt a lot about auto-layout, design libraries, and redlining documents in my time at IBM. I feel I can set-up documents correctly, produce high-fidelity wireframes with brand guidelines and produce handover documents for developers.
Experience as UX/UI Designer
It was important to me to get a realistic experience as a designer. I was not treated as a intern, I was treated as an equal designer from day one. This made me feel comfortable to pitch my ideas and suggestions in sketching sessions, meetings, and critic sessions. I attended every meeting that my team had and was expected to learn the domain of our product. I felt overwhelmed by the amount of information at the start of this product but it got easier as I got stuck in with design work. I obtained the team's confidence in me to take ownership of my project inside App Connect Saas; Log Viewer Enchancements. I take this epic from beginning to end, a project I'm proud of, that is live in the product today. From the 7th Month, I was moved onto a new product, Application Modernization (currently still in development stages), this faced a whole new set of challenges such as being apart of a new team, my Design Lead in Austin, Texas, and learning three domain products simultaneously. What I can say is, this project work contributed to a success at the THINK conference.
To keep me on track with my goals during this Internship, I met with my manager every two weeks. We created this mural to focus on the tasks a designer at band T (graduate designer) and band 6 would have to accomplish. In order to move up a band, you would be expected to be doing all of the "post-its". As you can see I was already performing majority of the tasks at a graduate level but working towards a band 6.
Sustainability | SDG 12
One of my outcomes was to adhere to the United Nation's Sustainability Goal 12: "Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns". During the year, IBM were very vocal on Sustainability, such as offering teams to work remotely two days out of the week to our reduce carbon footprint when commuting. To add to this, they even provided a free shuttle bus to collect staff from the train station, which is how I commuted to work - this persuaded employees to use public transport over using cars. We always used whiteboards instead of paper to reduce paper waste, and unnecessary file saving. The studios had sensor lights to reduce electric use. If possible we would hold our meetings in person than over webex or teams. Additionally, I achieved a badge in Sustainability for Enterprise Design Thinking: this course taught us ways in how we can design sustainably. This includes considering the life cycle of a product, whether production is worth the energy cost, and to make designs with less thrills and fewer pages as possible. IBM states it's "principles enable teams to create solutions that consider people, communities, and the planet" (IBM, 2018).
Reflection
In my year at IBM, I have learned a tremendous amount from everyone, especially the designers at the studio. From Enterprise Design Thinking, to how to work as a team. This experience has been life changing; design wise and socially. Before I joined to IBM, I did not realise how powerful a team can be together; from sketching sessions, to morning scrums. I had a lot of support from my team. I have been thrown in the deep-end for some tasks and have experienced juggling a lot of tasks at once. In my second product, I was delivering designs in a few hours for a fast-paced project that was ever changing. It has taught me resilience and how to be a better designer. I believe I have overcome my fear of hearing my own voice, and speaking up to share my opinion in a room of people more qualified than me. Every perspective counts towards a better outcome.
IBM Feedback
Before I left I was able to get some feedback from some of the designers I worked with over the course of the year.
IBM App Connect SaaS
Check out my detailed breakdown on how I tackled my first ownership of a project inside App Connect SaaS, from UX to visuals and handover.
