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I'm Joanie Saylor I'm a design principle
at IBM I have a mission to bring human
centered practices into the way our
teams are working across the company and
with our clients thanks so much for the
opportunity to be able to be here and
add to the conversation we're on about
year six of our mission to build up a
sustainable culture of design at IBM and
in doing so our designers have begun
working in just about every major
industry and domain that you can imagine
they're developing out domain expertise
in all kind in all kinds of situations
and and because of that they've got to
understand the needs and wants of all
different kinds of users so whether
they're serving the education or
students and educators whether they're
thinking about the world of a security
analyst an oncologist whether they're
thinking about new ideas in security or
the cargo industry even these are the
point is that these are spaces where
designers really most of us really don't
believe that we would ever be working
right none of us in our education
programs necessarily saw ourselves
participating in the business world this
way right and so as designers how do we
how do we actually be ready to drive
change how do how can we make ourselves
ready to make an impact and what we've
seen across our many teams at IBM is
that it's not designers that are the
unit of change it's teams and and just
bringing that thought into every aspect
of how we work has been a game changer
for us I love this graphic by my friend
Seth Johnson because it really gets to
the heart of our challenge and I think
the challenge of the many designers in
our industry right
today we're at IBM were maintaining a
steady state of about 2,000 designers
which sounds like a lot
but unless as a cohort as a profession
we're engaging with the whole and and
with the teams and the systems that
already exist we simply won't affect
anything right so for us this is really
where the value of Design Thinking as a
framework and as a vocabulary that that
we can propagate across the company has
has come in it's given us a way to
bridge the gap between the designer and
her or his team and given us a way to
align that that just didn't really exist
before when we started introducing
Design Thinking at IBM we brought in
kind of a standard model and one of the
things that we saw right away was that
our non designer teammates were viewing
this we're viewing design thinking as a
linear process as a checklist to be sort
of checked off and then forgotten right
and so we found that by shifting this
idea by shifting to this idea of the
loop of a continuous stream of observing
reflecting and making again and again
both with our teammates and involving
the actual users that we serve we found
that our teams are in a better position
to to remember that it's but it's called
design thinking because you actually
have to think while you're while you're
doing it that's a great one from Denise
Burton okay and so as we we as we
introduced design thinking we did so
really in a project context so trying to
never just simply teach design thinking
as a practice in the abstract but always
connecting it to project work and over
the course of a few years we had several
hundred projects happening in the
business with designers who are able to
coach and lead projects engaging their
whole team's in an approach that
involves you know human centricity
empathy understanding and continuous
prototyping and we found that you know
we were we were really seeing exciting
results from Forrester so
twice as fast to market reduce design
time reduce development time larger ROI
and this this really starts to get the
attention of our business leaders right
this would combined with the project
outcomes that we've started to see there
there became a large demand for for
teams who wanted to really learn design
thinking as a practice but also to they
wanted to engage with they wanted
designers and their teams they wanted
the time and the expertise of these new
people that now exist in our business
and so we we ended up actually having to
build out a digital learning platform
not just because we wanted to but we
honestly could not meet the demand of
the large or large company any other way
right and so one of the things that we
found is that this really lets us
nurture the capability of the rest of
our teams over like kind of in a
marketing sense we can continually be in
a relationship and kind of feeding new
content and ideas and adjustments to how
our teams are practicing and
understanding design thinking later this
year we will will actually have some
announcements about making this this
learning platform available to all AIGA
members but for now every AIGA member
can actually access our online entry
level course it's at ibm.com slash
design slash thinking and so now we're
we're finding ourselves in kind of a new
place we're asking ourselves new
questions what will be the role of all
of these does all of these designers in
our company going forward what will be
our role as a design leadership program
I recently got to have a conversation
with Dean Nitin Nohria he's Dean of the
Harvard Business School he's become
known for kind of exploring this
intersection between business and design
and arts and I asked him what
opportunities does he see for designers
to participate in business in the coming
years and he talked about
the ways the the current state that that
many businesses find themselves in and
the transformations that they're
undergoing and he said something that's
really stuck with me this idea that
there we go sorry this idea that there's
a way in which designers artists and
other creators have given voice and
imagination for how to move forward from
moments of disruption and he referenced
several several ideas from generations
past that that kind of Illustrated this
and it just got me thinking about how as
we're introducing design craft and
Design Thinking methods to the
uninitiated in our companies to non
designers it can often feel like the end
goal is simply to get everyone around us
using these methods and appropriately
relying on the skills of the design
craft in in the right situations and
there's no doubt that there's value in
doing that of course but I think you
know now that we've begun to you know
scale a vocabulary for design and Design
Thinking to just about everyone in our
company and now with our clients as well
we can we can start to see that this
isn't that it's not really the end goal
just to get everyone sort of working in
slight in a slightly new way or
understanding the skills and benefits of
design and designers it's simply a means
to have many more important
conversations you know conversations
like how might we understand and plan
for the implications of new technologies
how to design our designers and Design
Thinking experts we're really good at
playing out future scenarios we we can
apply that expertise to help shape a lot
of these new business questions and
ethics right and so and designers and
our teams are actually having the
ability to do that right now they're
sort of in the center of those
conversations where we really never were
before they're often leading them
and we're more and more welcomed I think
higher up in the organization and deeper
and deeper into strategic decisions and
so now we can kind of focus ourselves
not just on ensuring that our peers in
business and engineering are practicing
Design Thinking perfectly or
understanding our skills in detail but
on embedding and just being a trusted
partner in those conversations design
leaders are already finding ways to to
engage outside of our discipline to
start to demonstrate the power and
potential for design and design thinking
yes but also to really guide the
conversation beyond those fundamentals
our colleagues across disciplines are
really listening when we do that right
now I'm collecting stories and
commentary from design leaders far
outside of IBM or we got started last
year with many of you learning from many
of you and AIGA about you know how your
experiences integrating into business
and bringing new practices into the way
you're working are playing out with
omission to really elevate those
perspectives and find and advance new
themes and new sort of nuances for
leading work that matters so I'd love to
hear from you if you want to share and
we're looking for all kinds of stories
and examples from leaders everywhere
that are practicing design and design
thinking in business now thanks so much
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