International Business Machines
July 2014 — June 2021
*NOTICE | Out of respect for my previous employer and due to the NDA I had with IBM, not all of my work can be displayed publicly. Please request a PDF of my project use cases from me directly at laurenhartmanbaker@gmail.com. Thank you!
My experience at IBM mainly focused on developing the software portfolios of Analytics Platform, Watson Data & AI Platform, and IBM Cloud Platform. Over the course of 6 years, I have developed skills and responsibilities within the areas of user research, user experience, visual design, and mentorship.
IBM Cloud Platform
I joined IBM Cloud Platform as a Design Lead for the Discovery & Buy team in August 2019. Our objective was redesign the IBM Cloud catalog experience and address our Fortune 500 client business needs. The most recent project I have been working on is creating Private Catalogs as a service for account owners and users.
IBM Catalog — My current project has revolved around a new feature within IBM Cloud catalog. Our customers worried about the potential of teams or individual employees accidentally working with software and services that did not meet company compliances, privacy agreements, or budgets. The premise for this project is to give large organizations the ability to have account administrators hand-pick offerings from the catalog or add their own products in a personalized, controlled, provisioned private catalog for the rest of their employees. Please feel free to view the live version here at www.cloud.ibm.com/catalog
Watson Data & AI Platform
Over the course of 2.5 years on the Watson Data & AI Platform, I designed, advised and contributed to a handful of products in various roles. My original team, Analytics Platform (2015 - 2017), became part of the Watson and Cloud portfolios and my projects turned into Watson Studio and Watson Machine Learning. I then stepped away from focusing on a singular product into an agency role to work across different product teams as business needs arose.
Watson Studio — Formerly known as Analytics Platform NextGen Workbench, IBM Watson Studio is a leading data science and machine learning offering built from the ground up for an AI-powered business. My role was to create a unified experience to import, clean, discover, and build with their data by redesigning the SPSS Modeler.
Watson OpenScale — In the wake of underlying prejudices within software systems across the tech industry, Watson OpenScale was conceptualized as a platform where AI can learn how to identify biased data and recommend changes for more ethical outcomes. My role was to standardize a common design language for this product and across Watson portfolio. Additionally, I collaborated with the marketing and a small designer team to create the visual patterns and iconography of including an ecosystem illustration of users with OpenScale.
Watson Assistant — Watson Assistant is an AI product that lets users build, train and deploy conversational interactions into any application, device, or channel. My primary objective focused on improving the UX for Intent Recommendations. Additionally, I facilitated an IBM design thinking workshop to align the offering management, development and engineering teams to project the next steps for Watson Assistant over the course of the year and into 2020.
Watson Discovery — Watson Discovery is a search tool that understands the nuances of natural language in phrases and intents to help customers find what they need with more accuracy in less time. My primary role was to build the foundational UX patterns and information architecture for a new project that leverages all of Discovery’s services into one structured platform.
Analytics Platform
I joined IBM Cloud Platform after IBM's industry-leading Enterprise Design Bootcamp for new hires to focus on data management and machine learning. As a designer, I assisted in the creation of analytics products through user research, user experience design, interface design, and visual design.
NextGen Workbench — Now known as Watson Studio, NextGen Workbench was conceptualized under the idea of creating a single platform where data scientists could import, clean, discover, and build with their data. My role was to assist in understanding the needs and tenets of the user, then focus my efforts on redesigning the SPSS Modeler.
JoinPay — Otherwise known as Big Insights, Capstone was the team's first major unified project. My task was to design the user interface that coincided with how the team highlighted the capabilities of Capstone through a demo called JoinPay.