Workload Automation is an example of a legacy application in the extreme. This application has been around for well over 20 years and has the dedicated user base to go along with it. This was an interesting project to work on, not only because our project team was based out of Rome, Italy, but because of that very dedicated group of product users. Because they had been working with this product for so many years, the users had built up a very strong user community as evidenced by the annual user conference that they hosted and their fervent interest in any changes being proposed. There were people who'd built careers as Workload Automation specialists and they didn't want just anyone coming in and changing the system.
This was my first project for IBM as a Design Lead. As such, it was very challenging. Our user stories came from that dedicated user base. They knew what they wanted and weren't shy about asking for it. As a design team we were being asked to produce a cloud-based version of the legacy on-premise application, which was something that the user base was not asking for. However, those same users were great participants in the exploration process, willingly signing up to be sponsor users for the design team.
Sponsor users are an aspect of IBM Design Thinking, wherein dedicated users are recruited to work hand in glove with the design team. They sign-up to participate, and in doing so, are afforded a great deal of early access to design work. Our sponsor users also provided excellent feedback during usability testing sessions.
Because this was my first project for IBM, it's the one that I have the least amount of documentation for, though I do have a few mid-fidelity product screens to share below.