While working on Watson OpenScale, I collaborated with a small team to fulfill a request to imagine the visual identity and representation of the product. The goal for this project was to bring clarity in communicating the benefits of Watson OpenScale through the process and success of the user, not the list of functions and features.
Process
We began our sketches by applying characteristics and goals of Watson OpenScale:
Secure, reliable and trustworthy
Creates clarity and overcomes barriers
Uncovers new connections between relationships in data
From there, we divided our efforts into multiple iterations of hand drawn and digital marks that could translate the vision of Watson OpenScale to pen & ink. Over the course of 2 weeks, we landed on my version of a spark and refined it for use in both digital and physical mediums at various scales. The final iteration was drawn to relate to the IBM Cloud pictogram library with similar abstractions and gradient treatment.
In addition, I was asked to come up with an illustration that matched with the style of our icon to showcase how OpenScale worked for teams. After a few different approaches, my focus was to move away from being feature driven narrative. Instead I highlighted the various roles with their needs in one environment and how Watson OpenScale assisted in improving their individual work as well as collaboration. The imagery needed dimension in relation to the movement within IBM Cloud branding and our work on the iconography, so I went with an isometric style.
Solution
By the end of this project, a fully developed vision for the imagery, application, and recommendations for Watson OpenScale was handed to the marketing team and used by our product designers.
