Bringing AI to a
global workforce
👋
What this project highlights
This project highlights my expertise in AI Strategy & Implementation, demonstrating my ability to leverage AI to solve real-world challenges. It showcases my skill in creating intelligent, user-centric solutions that transform workflows, scale innovation, and deliver measurable impact across a global organization.
The development and success of AskIBM were made possible by a highly collaborative, cross-functional team.
Product Owner
Defined the vision and priorities for the platform, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and user needs.
Design Lead (My Role)
Directed the user experience design, ensuring the platform was intuitive, accessible, user-friendly, and aligned with our AI strategy across IBM.
Engineering Manager
Led technical strategy and implementation, overseeing the development of scalable and reliable architecture.
Iteration Manager
Coordinated agile processes, managed sprints, and kept the team aligned on deliverables and timelines.
Front-End Developers
Built responsive and seamless interfaces across web and mobile platforms.
Back-End Developer
Developed robust APIs and backend systems, ensuring smooth integration with existing tools and data sources.
Researcher
Conducted in-depth user research, usability testing, and feedback analysis to guide design and feature development.
Data Scientists
ptimized AI functionalities, leveraging the Granite 3 large language model to deliver intelligent, context-aware solutions.
Designing an AI that
works for everyone
The primary challenge was to harness the power of the Granite 3 large language model and transform it into a cohesive, accessible product that empowers users across the organization. This required addressing several key issues:
Educating IBMers
Ensuring IBM employees understand how to leverage AI in order to get the most out of it for their unique day to day tasks.
Fragmented Tools
Hundreds of teams independently building their own watsonx chat experiences and creating further inconsistency.
Scalability & Consistency
Implementing a unified design language to ensure consistency and usability across web, mobile, and API integrations for AI patterns and components.
Lost Hours
Routine tasks and endless information searches drained valuable time, hampering focus on strategic initiatives.
A collaborative approach to redefining productivity
By taking an iterative and user-driven process, we ensured that AskIBM evolved into more than just a tool—it became a foundation for smarter, more integrated workflows that empower IBMers globally.
Understanding the Landscape
Conducted in-depth research to uncover user pain points, identify fragmentation across workflows, and prioritize key areas for improvement.
Iterative Prototyping
Designed and tested prototypes to validate AI functionalities, gathering insights from a diverse user base to refine and adapt the platform.
Unified Strategy
Integrated 13 specialized assistants into a cohesive system, ensuring consistent and seamless experiences across platforms..
Contribution First Framework
Created patterns and components that could be leveraged by our core design systems team and use throughout additional IBM experiences.
The watsonx challenge, a catalyst
for insights and innovation
The watsonx challenge was a company-wide initiative inviting employees to create custom workflows using AskIBM’s workflow builder, with over 3,400 submissions tailored to diverse roles and tasks.
From these, 43 workflows were identified as highly productive and released for broader use, enabling targeted solutions across the organization.
This initiative provided a unique opportunity to gather feedback on AskIBM’s performance, user interface, and results, which we leveraged to refine the product and improve the experience.
Transforming work
at every level
AskIBM empowers employees to focus on high-value, strategic work by eliminating frustrations with fragmented tools, improving job satisfaction, and fostering seamless collaboration to boost overall team productivity.
Reported hours saved by IBMers using AskIBM - based on surveys and in depth data analysis.
The average number of prompts and monthly queries inputed into AskIBM since July 2024.
Number of dedicated assistants currently federated through AskIBM to support different disciplines and user needs.
Number of community built workflows designed by IBM employees to improve daily tasks unique to their workflows.
Impact beyond the numbers
New Standard in AI Design
AskIBM contributed foundational elements to IBM’s universal AI design library, ensuring consistent and intuitive user experiences across all AI tools.
Building a Scalable Framework
The project established a replicable framework for enterprise-wide AI integration, enabling scalable innovation and seamless unification of tools.
Increase Adoption and AI awareness
Through product tours, blog posts, ongoing tutorials, and the watsonx challenge more IBMers were exposed to the real benefits and time savings that AI can provide.
A Client Zero Story for Sellers
AskIBM’s success positioned IBM as Client Zero, showcasing its AI capabilities and empowering sales teams with a compelling real-world example.
Where it's going
AI will continue transforming digital tools, becoming seamlessly integrated into workflows and interfaces until it’s a baseline expectation. At IBM, we’re focused on overcoming technical hurdles while preserving the existing ecosystem, using an iterative approach to layer AI into search, dashboards, news, and more—paving a natural path to this future.
While this project was focused on the chat experience, the following show some examples of how the tool could be weaved into the fabric of our employee intranet.
Reflecting on the work
Getting to work with a tool that builds on AI is an incredible opportunity and experience for any designer. This work demands staying at the forefront of emerging AI trends, patterns, technologies, and understanding the profound impact AI is having on products and society.
Through this project, I learned that AI is fascinating, underutilized, still in its infancy, and here to stay. To design effectively for AI, I realized I must also be a super user of it. By immersing myself in different consumer AI products, I was able to better understand its potential and uncover innovative ways to integrate it into products and experiences.
Think Beyond the Interface
Understand AI’s capabilities deeply enough to design for outcomes, not just features.
Experiment and Innovate
Continuously test, learn, and push boundaries to uncover creative applications of AI.
Stay Curious and Adaptable
Embrace AI’s evolving nature and adapt to the new opportunities it brings to design and problem-solving.
Design for Trust and Clarity
Ensure AI interactions are intuitive, transparent, and aligned with user needs and expectations.