IBM Design Leader
Information Management

Provided design leadership and cross-portfolio user experience strategy for the IBM Information Management division. Advised executives on user interface technology, design process innovation, and portfolio integration. Led a company-wide workgroup on web user interface standards (IBM One UI). Led data tools portfolio design strategy and mentored members of the design and development community. Led hundreds of hours of customer engagement with Fortune 100 companies.

Roles and Awards

1. Design Executive — Information Management

As the first Senior Technical Staff Member for design within the IBM Information Management (IM) division, I was responsible for advising senior executives on user interface technology, design process innovation, and portfolio integration. During my tenure, IBM IM acquired many companies in this space, requiring constant efforts at cross-product integration and design consistency. In addition to my role as UX Architect for specific products and portfolios, I was a leader at the corporate and division levels for portfolio integration.

2. UX Architect — Cloud Data Tooling

Led 12-person multi-disciplinary design thinking team for cloud-based Data Server Manager (DSM). Led customer engagements and feedback analysis to design a seamless workflow integrating four previously separate products for database performance monitoring, admin, config management, and optimization. Developed interactive prototype using jQuery, Dojo, and Flot. Used agile methods to deliver iteratively to Beta customers.

3. UX Architect — Data Security Tooling

Requested by CTO of data security to redesign IBM Guardium for a radically simplified user experience. Led design team including product management, sales, support, technical architects, and UX specialists. Led customer interviews to define user roles, pain points, and key goals for discovering and protecting sensitive data. Iteratively tested designs with customers using conceptual wireframes and interactive prototypes.

4. Corporate Lead — Web Developer Education

Identified a critical need for improved web UI development skill in the company and successfully led initiative to solve the problem. Developed a series of web seminars and a syllabus of self-study online education for HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Dojo, jQuery, REST, Ajax, and other web development technologies. Created online community and mentor program including CTOs, Distinguished Engineers, and IBM Fellows. Designed a three-tier certification program to measure progress – over 400 certifications completed by participants in 14 Divisions across 27 countries.

5. Division Lead — Portfolio Integration Scenarios

Created a framework of reusable scenario assets to help design and development teams create scenarios showing solution integration and better sell Information Management products. Personas for stakeholders and end users, enterprise organization and team structures, allowed teams to create stories that showed how customers could use our products together to solve business problems. Framework used in multiple products to drive scenarios from initial planning to marketing and sales demos.

6. Division Lead — Ease of Use Assessment

Led a division-wide team to design an Ease of Use Assessment for identifying strengths, weaknesses, and competitive gaps in the total user experience for Information Management products. The assessment provides best practice criteria for pre-sales evaluation, up and running, administration, application development, problem resolution, integration, and end user efficiency.

7. Consumability Excellence Award

This award is given to those that made the biggest contribution to IBM product consumability -- improving the user experience for our clients and driving positive change in the IBM design culture. I received this award in 2012 as a designer and workgroup leader on IBM One UI -- a set of standards to create a consistent high quality user interface design across IBM products and solutions.

8. Outstanding Technical Achievement Award

The IBM OTAA is awarded to recognize outstanding achievements involving exceptional technical skill and insight (including design excellence). This 2012 award was related to my design and leadership on the Task Launcher -- an innovative user interface approach connecting users to their most important tasks in a product. The Task Launcher is the first thing users see in dozens of IBM products.

9. Invention Achievement Awards - 6th Plateau

IBM provides awards for individual patents, but also for ongoing contributions to it's patent portfolio. I received this award in 2015 after my most recent patent application. My most recently granted patent on Collaborative Troubleshooting is illustrated in the diagram. The invention combined fault tree analysis and community sourced troubleshooting advice – a form of social networking combined with open source code.

10. Outstanding Technical Achievement Award

The IBM OTAA is awarded to recognize outstanding achievements involving exceptional technical skill and insight (including design excellence). This award was related to my design leadership for the Optimization Service Center, a tool that makes it easy to tune SQL performance. The resulting product now generates millions of dollars in revenue for IBM.

11. Outstanding Innovation Award

The IBM OIA is awarded to significant contributions to technology and innovation that can be conceptualized and passed on to others for continued and new applications. I received this award for work on The Integrated Reasoning Shell Online Tutorial, a design that received multiple patents and was reused by dozens of other products in and outside of IBM.