IBM Garage Brazil
IBM Garage Brazil
Context
IBM iX is a global consulting agency that merges strategy, design, and technology to digitally reinvent businesses. When I joined the iX in 2013 as UX Manager, IBM had 96 years of history in Brazil. A consolidated brand as a traditional technology company. My first project was to participate in the development of a go-to-market strategy, to expand this brand awareness to the iX.
So, how might we communicate that a centennial tech firm now offers design services?
Role — UX Manager, Enterprise Design Thinker
Year — 2013
My work
I started assuming that professional services aren’t a business for the masses. It was necessary to conquer clients one by one in an individual conversation. I facilitated workshops with cross-functional partners, and we ended up with a winning vision. Implement the IBM Garage offering in Brazil.
The Garage is a model that combines IBM Cloud, IBM Enterprise Design Thinking, and agile methodologies to envision business opportunities and shift them into research-based ideas.
Our goal was to embrace IBM Garage’s unique methodology and deliver value to the clients. Our strategy was to team up with the IBM sales force and ask sales managers to invite their key clients’ leaders, as VPs and directors, to bring their business problems.
We then conducted an immersion workshop, similar to a design sprint, to generate ideas based on researched market trends and usage of IBM Cloud services.
I led several of these immersions. Below I will briefly outline one case, born in a workshop, which revealed so much value to the client that became a project.
Globo
Challenge
Globo is the largest media conglomerate in Brazil. Its News, Sports, and Entertainment shows reach 99.6% of the Brazilian population, and its TV channels speak to over 100 million people every day.
The raw material of Globo journalism is the interviewee, an essential element to produce news scripts that are broadcast daily on TV.
Finding the ideal interviewee is a hard job of panning people. The task becomes more difficult because Globo produces interviews at scale, up to 12 thousand interviews per year across the country.
Our challenge was to help Globo manage this volume of production.
So, how might we assure the quality of the interviewees? How might we avoid repeating the same experts in interviews throughout the year?
Process
We started in the immersion workshop understanding the problems they brought, which turned into a storyboard with an as-is scenario where the problem occurs.
In the next phase, we drew an interpretation of a future journey, sketching together many ideas focused on problems and on generating value.
In the final step, we prioritize which ideas to invest in and make prototypes to test.
Key takeaways:
— No shareable interviewees database. Producers have their sources on their phones and don’t share.
— Lack of process to find interviewees. Sometimes an internet search, the same sources as always, or references from press offices to unreliable sources.
— Lack of agility when the news script falls or the interviewee isn’t available at the last moment.
“The archbishop of Rio de Janeiro is almost an employee of Globo. He is interviewed for every religious news.”
Quote from an executive producer.
More research
Before I started to make prototypes, I realized that we didn’t have an unbiased understanding of users. We had an executive view with many missing points.
I wanted to understand their jobs, what they think and what they feel.
Globo executives agreed and invited us to visit the newsroom. During the seven-day visit, I interviewed producers, editors, and journalists of Jornal Nacional (JN), the prime time’s news show, in a total of 10 people.
I observed a full day’s work, from building the news script to the live broadcasting inside the switcher room, a vibrant journey of producing a daily newscast with all its challenges and obstacles.
I was able to empathize with the producers and their journey. I also understood how the interviewee is fundamental in the process.
Key takeaways:
— Users wanted access to a shared base of interviewees. But also keep their essential sources private.
— Users wanted to know when and how an interviewee participated in productions in the past.
— Users wanted more diversity of interviewees to choose from, avoiding repetitions.
— Users wanted to manage the quality of interviewees. Based on criteria such as knowledge of topics, presence in-camera, and others.
I synthesized these takeaways in an executive summary of what we learned in our discovery process. It presents outlined key personas, the storyboard of the as-is scenario, and the to-be user journey with the prioritized ideas.
This presentation is in the video below.
Getting feedback
I treated ideas as hypotheses to be validated rather than solutions. I developed mid-fidelity interactive prototypes to test with users and review the feasibility with the engineering team.
The mobile prototype was meant to explore ways to validate these ideas:
— A ranking system for scoring the quality of the interviewee.
— Notify the editor or chief producer that the interview has been broadcast and needs to qualify the interviewee.
The concept was a simple app that would receive push notifications when the broadcast ended. The user could qualify by giving a number of stars.
After a few rounds of usability tests, I learned:
— Users didn’t quite understand the concept of drag.
— Users had difficulties deciding between the number of stars.
— Chief producers didn’t watch all the was broadcasted. When they received the notification, they didn’t know what it was.
From the feedback, I evolved the prototype:
— I simplified the way to qualify the interviewee, just with thumbs up or down.
— Through an integration with the Globoplay platform, I brought the news to the ranking screen for convenience.
The desktop prototype was designed to explore ways to validate these ideas:
— Search interviewees by topic or expertise. Private sources were only visible for authorized users.
— Integration with Conteúdo Globo, an online library with more than 50 years of news videos produced by Globo. The producer can immediately visualize the interviewee’s on-camera presence.
— Suggestion of interviewees from Watson, the artificial intelligence as a service on the IBM Cloud. Gaven the production topic, Watson would suggest the best interviewee.
— Block the interviewee during the production process to prevent it from being used in other shows.
Outcome
The first release went live with features like search and interviewee qualify, the second release with integrations with Conteúdo Globo and Glopoplay. In the first months, more than 100 thousand contacts were registered in the app.
Impact
Globo journalism made a change management effort to adopt the new tool, with an internal campaign and a roadmap. The first wave was a training campaign for senior editors of Jornal Nacional, who passed on to their teams.
The second wave began adopting in other newscasts teams and developing a process, documenting the steps of finding the right interviewee and proactively updating and inserting new reliables sources in the app. And the third wave, adopt in other areas, such as sports and entertainment.
This digital transformation has put a new tool in the journalist’s belt. The teams gained agility and strengthened the community sense and teamwork from a common point of view.
Garages’ Impact
The Garage was an innovative customer experience for IBM. It allows us to show to the clients a taste of the iX’s design process. How it helps to adopt leading technologies, speed up product development, and measure value. How it supports business goals, whether helping respond quickly to disruption or guiding for full-scale transformation.
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