On April 13th I traveled to the headquarters of IBM Design in Austin Texas. My goal for the day was to learn how this new (well, two year old) division of the company is impacting product design and customer satisfaction. Below is an approximately 10 minute long video where I recap the key things I learned. If you don't have time to watch, here's the main thing you need to know:
IBM Design is about a lot more than just making products look nice. The (1000+ people) team's mission is to applying "design thinking" (the discipline of using creative problem solving to find solutions) to almost everything IBM does. It's not just about products (like Verse, Watson Analytics, BlueMix) but also changing the processes IBM follows for everything from feature requests, to on-boarding new employees and performance reviews. Following this formula: People + Practices + Places = Outcomes, IBM Design is changing the culture of IBM as much as it is changing the products.
As proof of IBM's long term commitment to design, they have recently announced a new title, Distinguished Designer. Those of you familiar with careers at IBM will know that Distinguished Engineer is a huge honour for developers. This new design-centric honour is intended to carry similar significance in the industry. The first three people to received this new distinction are Charlie Hill, Adam Cutler and Doug Powell. I worked with Charlie at Lotus for many years, and have had several meetings with both Adam and Doug. Doug was actually my instructor when I went through IBM's Design Thinking workshop last year. Congratulations to all three on this well deserved reward.