Planning Analytics
I worked as a User Experience Designer within IBM’s Business Analytics Hybrid Cloud organization, collaborating with a mid-sized design team to deliver user-centered solutions at scale. By applying design thinking principles, I helped elevate user experience as a core product priority—partnering closely with product managers, engineers, and fellow designers to transform product vision into intuitive, delightful experiences.
Company
IBM
Role
User Experience Designer
Team Size
20+ Designers
Context: Rethinking the user experience of multi-dimensional data modelling, analysis and reporting software built on TM1 architecture
My role included envisioning and crafting user experiences across both on-premise and cloud platforms. I collaborated closely with product managers, developers, and designers to ensure solutions met user needs while aligning with design best practices. I created design specifications for development handoff and personally contributed design across 25+ new features and product improvements.
I conducted on-site user research and usability testing with clients, facilitated design thinking workshops to align teams around user needs, and participated in design mentorship programs. In addition, I received three defensive patent publications and contributed one Search-3 patent filing, reflecting innovation beyond day-to-day product delivery. I also supported team culture through event planning and community-building initiatives.
Outcome 01: Planning Analytics Trial - Discover, Try, Buy Experience
I was tasked with improving the overall PA Trial (Product and DTB) experience within a short timeframe. To accelerate alignment, I led four cross-functional workshops to define the current and future-state experience, identify usability gaps, and prioritize the highest-impact opportunities. In parallel, I worked with business partners to better understand how the trial needed to support go-to-market goals and improve customer adoption.
This work informed targeted improvements delivered in the SC60 release, including a more discoverable Getting Started experience on the home page, the removal of low-value, marketing-heavy videos, and refinements to the tutorial flow to reduce redundancy and improve guidance. Together, these changes significantly improved clarity and time to value for new users.
A major outcome of the initiative was the complete redesign of the PA Quick Demo. The existing demo was long, unguided, and suffered from low engagement, as confirmed by Amplitude analytics. I led the design of a new, guided onboarding experience that could be completed in five minutes or less, aligned in-product content with marketing messaging, and used realistic, finance-focused scenarios to create a more meaningful narrative.
Due to technical constraints, the demo was built directly within the PA dashboard. I designed and implemented the experience end to end, partnering with a WalkMe developer to deliver guided flows. Post-launch analytics showed increased engagement and higher completion rates, validating the impact of the redesigned trial experience.
Outcome 02: Plans and Applications - automate processes and plan toward business goals
Users needed a better way to automate time-consuming financial planning tasks. I collaborated with cross-functional partners to design experiences that enabled organizations to create and manage their own financial plans and applications, giving teams clear visibility into progress against business goals.
The solution introduced visual workflow creation, allowing users to define planning steps, tasks, and dependencies with ease. Users could also enter actuals to forecast outcomes, understand the impact of cost changes, such as materials or mix, and quickly adjust or reforecast plans as conditions evolved.
To ensure we were solving the right problems, I led and participated in multiple design workshops, customer visits, and early design previews. This iterative, customer-driven approach helped validate direction early and shaped a more intuitive, flexible planning experience.
Outcome 03: Home, Responsive Dashboard and Navigation Redesign
I contributed to the redesign and modernization of Planning Analytics to align with IBM’s Carbon Design System, updating experiences across the product while also contributing new, reusable components back to Carbon for custom and shared interactions. This was a large, cross-team initiative that required close collaboration with Cognos, enabling us to share design patterns and maintain consistent, scalable experiences across products.
Dashboarding was a major focus area, particularly improving responsiveness and accessibility across devices. My team and I delivered responsive dashboard behavior, enabling widgets and entire dashboards to scale intelligently to different screen sizes and contexts. I also designed advanced modeling capabilities, including conditional formatting that allows users to easily customize table cells to align with overall dashboard styling.
I additionally led design improvements across product navigation, delivering enhancements such as a hamburger menu, breadcrumb trails within contextual views, improved metadata trees, and clearer personal and shared folder navigation. Alongside these updates, I refreshed core navigation components to reduce friction and help users accomplish tasks in fewer steps.