Knowledge Catalog

90% of the world's data was created in the last 2 years and 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day. Knowledge Catalog is a platform that helps data scientists and business analysts manage and organize their data to be used for AI and Machine Learning projects. I drove initiatives for design consistency across IBM for Knowledge Catalog. I was the lead designer for several products under Knowledge Catalog and established patterns and components to be implemented in the Carbon Design System.

Problem

When I joined IBM, they were transitioning from their old design system to the Carbon Design System. I was tasked to convert over 500+ screens into the new Carbon Design System before the end of the year.

Goal

As I was converting screens, I noticed a lot of discrepancies with UX patterns across all products. Design inconsistencies throughout products greatly diminished design quality. I saw this as an opportunity to unify design patterns and improve design processes.

Research

I collaborated with other designers to understand the reason for inconsistencies and synthesize patterns that were a priority. We learned that designers did not know how to navigate the design system so they would create custom patterns. Sometimes designers couldn’t find a specific UX pattern and wasted time trying to find it. Lack of versioning control led designs to outdated patterns.

User Testing

We prioritized key UX patterns and worked with UX researchers to conduct A/B testing and figured out the best design solutions for pagination, table customization, and nested tables.

Results

We shared our data-driven findings with the Carbon Design team and provided best practices and guidance for them to implement in the design system. We shared our user research with designers across IBM and developed an interim design solution to maintain version control and design consistency.

Our improved design solution allowed us to quickly share and release design features, UX patterns, and components that other designers can utilize in their products.