‘IBM Verse’ Case Study
My role:
Junior user experience designer, wireframes, user-testing, visual design, hi-resolution mock-ups, specs for implementation, coordinating with development
Project overview:
In 2014 I joined the IBM Verse design team. Verse is a cloud based email experience that incorporates a persons calendar invites, contacts, and action items. It is currently used through-out the IBM enterprise. I was responsible for designing the ‘People’ section of the app on iPad and iPhone.
Building on the success of IBM’s Lotus Notes email experience (which had over 20 million users), the challenge for Verse was to envision a ‘new way to work’ and make email work for the user by surfacing relevant content from their most important contacts, making it easy to take action on priority tasks.
Designing IBM Verse People
The People section of Verse needed to solve the problem of users feeling stressed when sifting through hundreds of emails, trying to find important content, and feeling isolated from their co-workers.
It became clear that the solution for People should provide a way for users to indicate which people are important to them so that they could easily refer back to recent interactions and content to collaborate with them easily. But more than that, Verse should also learn over time what is important to a person based on their interactions and behaviour, and be able to make suggestions based on the content and people that are most likely to be relevant.
By the time I joined the Verse team they had previously done a design thinking workshop, come up with personas, written hill statements, and worked on the web designs. I reviewed all this material and absorbed more supporting information by listening to the existing team members and senior designers while getting stuck in to tackling the ‘People’ challenge.
Early Sketches
The exploration phase of Verse was a lot of fun. I was learning a lot about designing for mobile through playing around with actual devices to observe the interactions, as well as referring to the Apple iOS Human Interface Guidelines. This helped to inform my sketching and make sure that the ideas I was generating were feasible and based on common patterns.
I was encouraged to think outside the box and keep in mind how the design could evolve over time. Sketching also really helped to surface little ‘what-if’ questions which I captured along the way to discuss with the team during design review meetings.
Sketch of a contact view beside the list view on iPad
Sketch of adding a new contact on iPad
Sketch of a groups contact list on iPad
Sketch of searching the people view on iPhone
Wireframe Iterations
Moving the sketches into wireframes was really interesting because it meant I could focus in on certain ideas more and play around with different versions of screens a little quicker by just copy - pasting and making edits.
It was easier to get feedback on these too as the wires were neater than sketches and could simply be turned into clickable step-by-step prototypes using Keynote.
Exploration of swipe actions on the people contact list on iPhone
Exploration of clicking to open people suggestions on iPad
Exploration of an important contacts recent interactions and content on iPad
Exploration of dragging and dropping a suggested person into the important section on iPad
First Release
With the help and support of our senior mobile designer (who was always on hand to give helpful feedback and advice) - and through collaboration with the extended design team working on the mail, calendar, and actions tab - we successfully released the Verse mobile app!
First release of the Verse app:
a basic list of all contacts
an action to mark contacts as important
important contacts view with recent emails, calendar events, and files
contact profiles with general info and recent emails
Vision work for future releases:
online status / chat awareness
quick actions on the important people cards
an attachments tab on the contact profile
suggested important contacts
insights into why people were suggested
swipe actions on the all contacts list
creating contact groups
(*as seen in the TV ad below)
Important People
Profile Information tab
All People
Profile Messages tab
IBM Verse TV Commercial
To build up excitement ahead of our official product launch, in March 2015 IBM created a TV commercial for IBM Verse that aired during the Super-bowl half-time break in the USA. I supplied final artwork of my ‘People’ screens for OGILVY in New York who were producing the commercial, and my designs were featured on the iPad that appears!
The ad featured Hollywood actor Dominic Cooper using IBM Verse on his iPad to help him navigate a busy workday and surface what important people and tasks he needed to focus on.
Important People view with cards for each person showing quick actions, online availability status, and most recent interactions.
Contact profile with quick actions, online availability status, info, emails, and attachments.
Mobile User Interviews
After the initial first release of IBM Verse the team continued to iterate on designs based on user feedback. I contributed to ongoing research efforts by conducting remote telephone interviews that were arranged by our teams lead design researcher.
Participants included IBMers from around the world who were business development managers and business consultants working with customers. The purpose of these calls was to find out how they used mobile devices to do their work. Each question was designed to prompt the participant to walk through their typical work day, focusing on moments when they used mobile - or would have, if the right tool was available. After the interviews I analysed the recordings and transcripts to pull out key findings.
These insights helped to validate our designs, inform some of our assumptions, and also to highlight potential new areas for exploration and issues we needed to address.
“How do you start your work day?”
“What tools or strategies do you use to prioritise your work?”
IBM Verse Social Webinar
I was a panel member for the IBM Verse Social Webinar in March 2015, where Bryan Kramer (President / CEO of PureMatter) interviewed representatives from the Verse design team about our experience designing the product. The webinar was live-streamed online and had an audience of over 2,000 people tweeting in questions during the conversation. It was a privilege to represent our hard-working team and a fun way to explain all the new features of Verse!
Official Launch of IBM Verse
IBM Verse for web was made generally available on Tuesday 31st March 2015! While the iOS mobile app release was not until April 2015, we still marked the occasion of the initial product launch with celebrations at each of the team sites - Littleton, Massachusetts, USA and Dublin, Ireland.
Our VP of the IBM Ireland Lab in Dublin congratulated the designers, developers, and offering managers who had worked together to reach this milestone. Along with my team-mates who designed the ‘Calendar’ and ‘Activities’ part of the mobile app, we presented an overview of our experience working alongside the web team and what it was like designing Verse for mobile.