IBM

I currently lead design research for IBM Blockchain Solutions (including Food Trust)  and lead UX design for two of those solutions: a currently secret blockchain service, and another currently secret logistics service. Before that I led research and design for compute and network services on IBM Cloud, IBM Q, Watson Education, and others that I describe below.

Please contact me directly to learn more about my latest work.

Blockchain

In addition to the solutions I led design or research for, I have also been involved in the broader blockchain space at IBM. I spoke at an event for recent sales hires about Food Trust and the importance of UX research, where I also co-led a design thinking workshop to align them on the importance of understanding and empathizing with users as much as customers. Similarly, in mid-2018 I advised the organizers of the Blockchain Bean event, where another IBM team collaborated with Ogilvy and Brooklyn Roasting Company on a public display of food supply chain transparency at Smorgasburg.

I have also frequently worked with the Blockchain Platform team to align research and design interests across blockchain applications. As one of only a couple researchers in the entire blockchain space at IBM, I frequently shared and learned about as much as I could to ensure our teams were as prepared as possible with cross-domain research.

Design career website

In 2016 I contributed generative and evaluative research for our internal career growth site that helped designers build a “portfolio of experience.” We sought to help entry level designers with a clear model for career progression, which was quite hard to navigate at the time. Our executive stakeholders suggested we do this by giving those entry level designers concrete examples of what is expected in a mid-level designer’s portfolio and, more importantly, guidance on how and when to document their experiences to get there. Within four weeks, my team delivered a high-fidelity prototype of the site with limited content, but the project still had not been fully completed last I checked in mid-2018. Although I did still continue using the insights I gathered and colleagues I met to further my own career and mentor junior researchers.

Recruiting

Every few weeks I reviewed portfolios for Maelstrom as well as full-time design research candidates. As a former Maelstrom design intern, its lead Devin O’Bryan invited me to join as an interviewer for the program’s cultural interview round, which he described as the person with the final say of whether a candidate will be hired. I have interviewed many candidates, including a couple who joined the program and have earned high praise from executives for their final projects.

During Austin Design Week, I managed IBM’s presence as the main event (The Hive), providing recruiting materials to passersby and discussing my experience as an intern, onboarding designer, and now designer.

Social Innovation Club

In Austin, I worked with John Challis and others to set up a “social innovation club.” Members met up in person and on Slack to share our non-IBM projects in the social good space, as well as sought advice from the Austin design community via Slack https://fresh2design.slack.com/archives/impact-design. I led an effort to enhance collaboration with Open Austin via cross-posting announcements, hosting a colocated meetup in the IBM studio, and bringing studioers to Open Austin tech talks, hack nights, hackathons, and meetups.