Simplifying Complexities
Scope
Led end-to-end UX design for the QNX Everywhere campaign that easily enabled users to gain access to free products
Role
UX Designer II
Developer Experience
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Duration
6 months
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Industry
IOT
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Embedded Systems
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Overview
As a UX Designer II at BlackBerry, my role seldom applied to different products, but when I did, I was able to interact with and positively influence direction. During the initiative of the QNX Everywhere campaign, I led the strategic execution of increasing traffic to the QNX product through effective UX design and marketing alignment. This initiative began with a comprehensive evaluation of existing workflows and technologies and evolved into a user-driven, technologically and marketing-aligned solution.
The Problems
Assisting the BlackBerry QNX Everywhere initiative in October 2023, I entered during the early stages of the campaign, and the campaign's success faced serious UX roadblocks:
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Excruciatingly slow processes: Users were expected to wait up to 2 business days to gain access to the product
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Legacy systems: Prevented widespread delivery of user endpoints
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Accessibility issues: Ensured that the foundational element of the campaign, being everywhere, was missed
Core Objectives:
Word of organizational restructuring was circling, and I had to work quickly. My objectives were created with a prioritization matrix in mind to highlight the quick in easy wins that would provide the most impact, but equally provide a future vision if I were impacted:
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Identify and expose the problems through workflow diagrams, user research, and stakeholder interviews
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Provide a North Star to follow if there is no UX designer to provide guidance
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Advocate for improved UX and accessibility in the process from marketing to product engagement
The Approach
Objective 1: Identify and Expose
The Challenge: Customers signing up to freely use the product were hindered by a manual verification process that took a minimum of two business days to complete before being granted access.
My Actions
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Conducted stakeholder interviews to understand the systems involved
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Audited the interfaces and outcomes of each phase in the journey
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Produced a user journey map highlighting areas that have high potential to cause friction
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Delivered findings in a presentation format to leadership to gain support
Objective Results:
Visualizing key roadblocks through user journey mapping enabled stakeholders to better empathize with users and align development efforts to drive meaningful system improvements.
Objective 2: Provide a North Star
The Challenge: Organizational restructuring was rapidly affecting our team, the campaign was rapidly approaching launch day, and a vision had not been set for the future of the experience.
My Actions
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Wireframed a vision for the onboarding process through to license delivery
- Structured a strategic alignment ​package with a prioritization matrix filled with findings from Objective 1.
- Guided best practices for implementation and accessibility standards to consider during implementation.
Objective Results:
Enabled developers and stakeholders the ability to effectively implement a user-focused change with minimal user research that would positively affect both the user and the business case.
Objective 3: Advocate
The Challenge: A layoff inevitably affected my position with BlackBerry, leading to not seeing the full fruition of the project and supporting its implementation.
My Actions
Before departing from BlackBerry, I:
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Ensured that development teams and project management alike remember to keep users at the core of their decision-making processes.
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Championed accessibility and showed the wins that accessibility provides to not just organizations but also the users, and where our current implementation deviates from WCAG2.0 AA standards.
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Highlighted ​the improved relationship between project management and engineering by showing the translation of business requirements to user needs through the reduced churn on deliverables and development time
Objective Results:
Culturally, the teams I engaged with at BlackBerry were positively affected not just on a professional level, but on a personal level as well.
The Impact & Results
Immediate Impacts:
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Organizational Change: Stronger cross-functional collaboration continues within the organization to this day.
Long-term Impacts:
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Developer relations improved and were supported by the introduction of a user-focused blog https://devblog.qnx.com/ and other community engagement channels
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Revenue increased YoY from $45M USD in Q1 2024 to $51M USD in Q1 2025, directly tied to enhanced sign-up processes and reduced customer drop-off
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License delivery time reduced by approximately 98.82% - from 2 business days to 30 minutes, enabling sales leads to track serious users and spend less time delivering licenses, driving improved sales metrics
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Secured market leadership as the world's #1 Real Time Operating System (RTOS) by eliminating massive road blocks
Reflections
Broaden horizons
By broadening my horizons I could positively impact larger audiences and showcase the effect effective UX has on products.
Always get user input no matter how small
Given the time constraints, I was unable to adequately schedule time for usability tests or user interviews. By voicing user frustrations and aligning it with campaign expectations, I believe the project would have gained more support.
Keep it simple
In simplifying processes - I believe that traction can improve by making it easier for others to understand the direction you're leading.
Conclusion
The QNX Everywhere initiative was an incredibly successful strategy that has positively impacted thousands of embedded software developers across the world by enabling them to break into the world if embedded software development without cost. This project demonstrated through simple system audits, identifying small redundancies and manual processes, and massaging these problems into effective solutions, businesses can open up a whole new channel of work that generates revenue with little downtime.
