iX Design Collective— a shared, living repository
Client: IBM iX (an internal, grassroots project!)
Role: UX Designer and Information Architect
Intent
Across the IBM iX NA studios, several individuals, including myself, had organized Box folders to share UX and Visual design templates, examples, and links with their colleagues. In November 2020, I was approached by a design lead to join a group of delegates called the Tiger Team formed to create a centralized repository of project examples and reusable templates for common UX and design deliverables. This library of resources, created by designers and for designers, became known as the iX Design Collective.
Impact
This initiative has now grown to 155 files and 295 people. Consultants have access to resources to be inspired by one another’s work, make cross-studio connections and find guidance for tackling new challenges or familiar problems in new ways. In our most recent survey, 72% of respondents said they found the iX Design Collective to be very or extremely helpful. We have recently expanded to a global presence by connecting with iX studios in India, Brazil, and Canada.
Initiative Goals
Enable iXers to quickly learn new skills by referencing a shared set of examples
Establish a standard naming system and format for these common UX activities
Create efficiencies for future projects and mitigate confusion around the purpose of each of these activities
Foster new connections across designers in iX NA studios
Setting governance rules & guidance:
We began meeting weekly to organize our grassroots effort and set a team manifesto, goals for our work, and roles on our team. Our overall role of our “tiger team” was to evangelize this resource library, and keep it up-to-date and as useful as possible. Each studio delegate was tasked with collecting top-tier work from our individual studios and adding it to the box folder. Template and resource links were also collected and uploaded. We made lists of how our studio defines its UX/Design activities so we could reconcile and create one set of names.
As this resource was going to be unleashed to 200+ individuals across North America, our team created a set of guidelines and rules around its use. Due to the confidentiality of client work, work examples were blinded and watermarked. Templates were recommended to be updated with filler text. A manifesto outlining things you need to know about the iX Design Collective, how to use it, why to use it, code of ethics, etc was attached to the Box folder as well for all to access and read.
Organizing and scaling reusable assets:
Our team split up and began taking action on consolidating and organizing all the content and resources. We structured the folders to account for examples and templates, and we wrote how-to files for each UX activity. I created a site map and structure for the folders, enabling us to identify gaps across our folders.
A few months later, with the change of Craft alignment across IBM iX, our team shifted our focus to not just UX and Visual design, but to other crafts as well. I lead a full restructuring effort to enable other disciplines and crafts like experience strategy, content design, and go-to-market to be included. Rather than craft-aligned folders, all of our activity folders were organized into project/engagement phases. Tagging enabled us to identify the craft(s) associated with that activity and for easy filtering of folders. We were met with great feedback and excitement around the expansion and restructuring of the iX Collective.
Gathering feedback and expanding our resource:
We officially published the iX Collective four months after our initial meeting and began our campaign to market this new resource to designers across iX North America. We presented at several meetings and each studio delegate was tasked with marketing this resource to their local colleagues and resourcing the best work to add to the Collective. I also created a bookmark of the iX Collective across our design Slack channels to make the link even easier to find.
As this has been an ongoing effort, our team continues to work on further organizing and expanding the Collective. Five months after it was made public, we created a survey to gather feedback and suggestions. We were met with great ideas and feedback and held a strategy meeting to take action.
Happy Hour Partytime Podcast
Intent
In late 2022, the iX Design Collective leads identified a need to foster a sense of virtual community around the craft of UX, Research, and Design. We have a lot of great content in the iX Design Collective Box folder, and we saw an opportunity to promote it by inviting our colleagues to join a conversation around best practices and innovative approaches to our work across clients in IBM Consulting.
We began an experiment, to host a monthly event with a featured topic or deliverable. We knew the format needed to be simple and low-effort: volunteer experts have an hour-long informal discussion with one another (no slides needed) around the topic. We have an open Your Learning series invite, so anyone is invited. Q&A and laughter are encouraged, and afterward, the meeting recording is published alongside the relevant content in the iX Design Collective Box folder.
Impact
After only two episodes we knew we wanted to continue. The meetings were well-attended, the conversation flowed, requests for the recordings poured in, and we all had fun and learned something about the topic in the process. We now have four episodes and 62 unique learners and we plan to continue to measure success through the rest of the year. (Listing of all episodes)