The Mobile Innovation Lab (MIL) was a research group at IBM which operated on the philosophy that mobile is soon-to-be the primary mode of transaction and delivery for critical business insight. The lab leveraged IBM’s portfolio of resources, partnerships, and products to innovate how consumers interacted and communicated through their mobile devices. The lab hired a group of design interns, myself included, to help research and design new experiences for the mobile platform.
Within a group of four, I served as UX designer and researcher for the IBM Mobile Innovation lab on a 10-week project for sports fans. We were asked by the lab to learn about the experience of service providers and attendees during a major sporting event, like a football game, through field research. With our learnings, we were tasked to conceptualize compelling solutions to address the users’ pain points that utilized a unique product IBM has developed internally.
Early in the process, we had brainstorming sessions every single day and stuck with fast and easy ways to prototype ideas. I took ownership over market viability research, identifying user needs through field research, and connecting those needs to potential design solutions. To utilize potential prior learnings, I interviewed internal employees from across the org to understand similar products they’ve worked on and what they found through research. Additionally, I organized field trips to attend a few large-scale sporting events to see first-hand the experiences of the different user segments, their work-flows, and their needs. Once our research was complete, I created a user journey map to communicate our findings to members of the MIL and to propose a focus for the product. Then, I designed user flows for the three core user segments, created the information architecture, and designed the layouts, interactions, and functionalities of the product.
Some mid-fidelity prototypes to showcase our design to stakeholders. The project was extremely fast paced but we were successful in delivering a high quality proposal along with a demo on time. We presented to IBM executive members and lab product managers who praised our solution and product demo as well as our design process. Parts of our proposed solution were implemented toward a larger project and parts of the design process we used were further expanded on by the MIL team.
We often stayed late in the office to meet our deadlines. 