Tactile Wireframing Kit Automatic IP Range Selection Multigenerational VPC

Product Impact

 

Guiding and motivating a team through a challenging product delivery.

THE STORY OF MULTIGENERATIONAL VPC.

I have worked on Virtual Private Cloud since its inception. When it GA’d in 2019, technical constraints required a bifurcated release of the product, which resulted in two worlds: Gen 1 released first, then Gen 2 released several months afterwards. Because the foundational technology of Gen 1 and Gen 2 was different, resources provisioned in each environment were not interoperable. While the design team was unable to impact the architecture of the product, we understood that there were many potential pitfalls that we needed to help our users avoid and navigate. Through this project, I motivated a design team to navigate seemingly insurmountable technical challenges while maintaining morale. I encouraged the team to understand where they could make a marked impact and focus their efforts in the scope of their control. As a team, we led cross-functional efforts to help the user better understand the implications of provisioning resources in each of these environments via multiple touch points including overview pages, modals, notifications, and switchers. We also fiercely advocated an accelerated transition to one VPC environment for users to be productive in. As of February 2021, Gen 1 has been sunset and users are fully productive in the Gen 2 environment.

Engaging partners for cross-functional collaboration.

AUTOMATIC IP ADDRESS SELECTOR

I identified a lack of collaboration across our disciplines and initiated co-collaboration sessions with our design, development, and product management partners. During these meetings, we brainstormed opportunity areas in our products that had high impact and high feasibility. One of the outcomes was designing a more efficient way for architects to organize the subnets in their networks. This is one of the product’s key differentiators and routinely receives praise in user testing studies.

Designing for accessibility with accessibility in mind.

TACTILE WIREFRAMING

We often worked with a dev manager who has a vision impairment. He needs to use a screenreader called JAWS to understand our design concepts so we can communicate about their feasibility and accessibility. However, JAWS only works on coded applications so by the time he was able to give feedback, the dev teams had already spent a considerable amount of time developing the designs. If he had feedback or comments, the team had to weigh the severity and if it was worth extensive refactoring. We designed a tactile wireframing kit so we could have a shared language to give all our partners a more equal seat at the table.

 

Team Impact

 
 
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process

Intake request diagram

I illustrated a document to address a variety of situations the design team was encountering, including what to do when:

  • A product manager interrupts your sprint with a request for work.

  • A designer’s sprint is already at capacity and they need to understand priorities.

  • A product manager does not have proper documentation to ensure the work has been accepted onto the roadmap and has dev resources.

 
 

process

Sprint composition

I instructed teams to think of sprints in four categories in order to give them better control of their workload and to boost their morale.

  1. Feature work: regular requests that come in from our Product Managers.

  2. Vision work: anything that is a design led effort. This enables the design team to prioritize innovation.

  3. Flex: ability to accommodate more feature or vision heavy sprints.

  4. Connect: encourages teams to spend time with each other as a team.

 
 
“You provide the perfect balance of structure and support to allow me to work comfortably in my daily workflow, and you trust me and our team to be autonomous. I value this a lot and it makes me feel like I can grow and make a real impact on our team and the work that we do.”
— Direct Report
 
 

Education

Lunch and Learns

I instituted a weekly “Lunch and Learn” knowledge share so designers could help onboard our team onto all of the products we service. Designers took turns signing up for sessions and prepared learning materials to educate the team about their focus areas.

This knowledge share has 3 artifacts: a one-sheeter that outlines the basics of the service, a Mural full of annotated product screenshots to contextualize the one-sheeter information, and a video recording of our meeting.

100% of the designers on the team said this series has positively impacted their knowledge of various domains in IBM Cloud.

 

Education

Onboarding

I created customizable onboarding Murals for any new team members that give them a bespoke guide to their experience at IBM.

  • A welcome message including who their leadership is, who their team is, and where they are situated in IBM.

  • Information about their domain (partially sourced from the Lunch and Learns) depending on what their entry point is. For example, an entry point for someone transferring from another team within public cloud will be different from an entry point for someone who is completely new to IBM.

  • I also included a section that details all of the software and applications we use as well as how to download and install them.

  • An FAQ section that is a catch all for common questions, like how to order a credit card, how to expense software subscriptions, and how to log vacation.

“I wish I had this when I joined the team. It would have saved me a lot of time.”
— Direct Report
 
 

Team Building

Culture captain

Prioritizing bonding events became more critical since our team transitioned to working from home in March of 2020. I initiated a program called Culture Captain to ensure we were actively investing in a healthy team culture.

Every sprint a different designer is nominated to plan any sort of virtual team bonding activity. The event is completely up to the current Culture Captain and can be as simple as a 30 minute happy hour, a game of Pictionary, or something completely different. The designers on the team have had fun coming up with their own spin on Culture Captain over the past year.

 
“Pandy Made Me Do It”Show and tell, but with guilty pleasures the team binge watched or impulse purchased during the pandemic. Planned by Myan Duong and Isabelle Encela

“Pandy Made Me Do It”

Show and tell, but with guilty pleasures the team binge watched or impulse purchased during the pandemic.

Planned by Myan Duong and Isabelle Encela

“The Ratchelor”An online reimagining of The Bachelor, but with rats.Planned by Helen Lee

“The Ratchelor”

An online reimagining of The Bachelor, but with rats.

Planned by Helen Lee

“Secret Fauci”Secret Santa gift exchange where the gift had to be a reusable mask based on the likes and hobbies of your teammate. Read about it in my article.Planned by me.

“Secret Fauci”

Secret Santa gift exchange where the gift had to be a reusable mask based on the likes and hobbies of your teammate. Read about it in my article.

Planned by me.

 
 

I am proud that my team values my investment in our culture. In the spring of 2021, I won the People’s Choice Culture Award. The recipient of this award is nominated by their team and peers for “displaying attributes of growth, inclusion, innovation, and feedback while achieving positive outcomes for IBM.”

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