At IBM, there exists a myriad of resources for designers, developers, and more to help them create products. However, many of these assets, artifacts, resources, or whatever you might label them exist in a wide array of spaces. This decentralization makes it harder for IBMers to create experiences across our offerings that work together, work the same, and work for the user.

Some examples of the decentralization we are tackling are the wide variety of web properties containing IBM resources such as Carbon Design System, Enterprise Design Thinking, and IBM Accessibility, just to name a few.

As a Visual and UX Designer with the Design Program Office (DPO) it is my goal through Carbon Next to make it better, faster, and more cost-effective for IBMers to deliver excellent experiences to our users. That's a lot of high-level fluff, isn't it? Essentially, the task is to bring together all of the existing separate properties under one umbrella, Carbon Next, to serve as a hub both for IBMers but also with a public-facing side for our open-source properties and information.

Jumping into this project at its infancy meant a great deal of ambiguity and uncertainty as to how it would unfold. To kick things off, I developed an information architecture prototype (following the creation of an extensive object model) which was tested with the Summer 2021 Patterns Bootcamp, a training for early career professionals within IBM Design. This prototype served as v0.5 of the system in the form of a PDF booklet that users could utilize to better understand IBM, IBM Design, and what resources and knowledge they'd need to do their most impactful work.

Following the initial prototype and research, I then moved into the building of the actual system. I was responsible for early information architecture explorations, collaborating with UX Research to develop research initiatives, Home page, early Assets filtering explorations, and the experience for the Practices world within the system. Diving a smidge deeper into the Practices realm, as it was my most current work, I worked to understand and refine the data model for objects within the space further. As the structure of the system came together we created countless low fidelity prototypes to massage out all the kinks before bumping up to something more refined.

The final system, dubbed Carbon Next, aims to house much of disparate knowledge and resources within IBM. Through filtering, statuses, and a well-structured object model we were able to create a tool that is both useful and informative to the user all within one site, rather than needing to explore 5+, as many IBMers were experiencing.