Transforming an Industry through Empathy and Insight
From Napkin Concept to Industry-Leading Product Through Strategic UX Guidance
Scope
Led end-to-end UX design for the web interface and CLI, including research, wireframing, prototyping, and usability testing.
Role
UX Designer II
Developer Experience
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Duration
3 years
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Industry
IOT
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Automotive
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Overview
As a UX Designer II at BlackBerry, within the BlackBerry IVY Developer Experience team, I led the strategic design transformation of a disruptive industry technology by embedding user-centered design principles into established project management frameworks. I developed a brand-aligned style guide, fostered cross-functional collaboration with global business partners to ensure consistent, high-impact delivery, and implemented robust feedback cycles. This initiative began with a comprehensive evaluation of existing UX practices and evolved into a user-driven, iterative release process that markedly enhanced the overall user experience.
The Problems
Joining BlackBerry IVY in August 2021, I entered during the early stages of product development, and the product's success faced critical UX challenges:
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Minimal Client Understanding: Teams had no consolidated location to view, digest, and drill into user feedback
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Complex Product Structure: The product was incredibly complicated to understand, set up, and use
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​Segregated Teams: Teams worked in silohes and were not leveraging each department's leadership or insights
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Uninformed Decision-making Processes: Product direction was dictated by opinion and ease of implementation rather than user-centric data
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Minimal Design Resources: There were no design assets readily available to envision the product's future
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Legacy Implications: Leveraging ancient software with little UX consideration
Core Objectives:
My core focus was to:
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Empower the team by teaching UX processes and tools to elevate user experiences
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Embed UX into project management operations that work alongside production and have users heard
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Identify and expose the problems through workflow diagrams, user research, and stakeholder interviews
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Disseminate user feedback at scale that is easy to drill into, digest, and understand
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Craft user-centred processes and design assets for future development efforts
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Establish strong relational bonds between internal and development partners
The Approach
Objective 1: Teach basic UX
The Challenge: UX was a new concept and culturally rejected as a profession, as developers and project management "knew" their audiences.
My Actions
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Listened to the leadership teams to understand where their UX maturity lands
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Held frequent lunch and learn sessions across multiple departments
- ​Taught university intern students on a quarterly cadence
- Showcased small wins
- Established an open-door communication channel for all departments to contact me with questions about UX
Objective Results:
UX methodology spread through departments and enabled team leads to pause to think about the user before making rational decisions.
Objective 2: Introduce UX into Operations
The Challenge: Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) omit UX and user input, resulting in missed opportunities in the product development process and increased development time.
My Actions
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Conducted stakeholder interviews through multiple departments to understand the existing process
- ​Collaborated with business partners to create personas
- Attended client workshops with business relationship leads to capture observed user frustrations
- Crafted a vision for the future of the product through data-driven insights to present to leadership
- Informed on where UX processes would best fit in the existing landscape of the product development process
Objective Results:
Influenced product management to shift from short-sighted perspective fixes to user-focused evidence-based design strategies, leveraging user research and design thinking for lasting impact.
Objective 3: Identify, Understand, and Expose user issues
The Challenge: Initial user feedback exposed significant workflow complexity, misunderstandings, time constraints, and user frustrations.
My Actions
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Collaborated with business partners to create and implement a solution that can receive user feedback over several days during a release cycle
- Connected with leadership to ensure alignment between the implemented solution and product direction​
- Worked with sales team leads to access customers directly for more robust research initiatives
- Collated findings with operational support leads to deliver actionable items following a release cycle
Objective Results:
User feedback was then directly inserted, scoped, and planned as part of subsequent releases. However, not appropriately prioritized.
Objective 4: Disseminate User Feedback at Scale
The Challenge: Post release UX audits revealed misalignment between user feedback and implementation.
My Actions
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Conducted stakeholder interviews to better understand technological limitations
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Translated user feedback from users' perceived frustration to engineering-aligned actionable items
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Collaborated with business partners and created an interactive dashboard that eliminated siloing of user feedback through various teams
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Created comprehensive post-release reports and connected with leadership to disseminate the success of the releases
Objective Results:
Convinced stakeholders that UX and user feedback must be part of the entire process from planning through to release.
Objective 5: Craft User Centred Processes
The Challenge: The existing product development and software development processes didn't effectively support rapid user-centred iteration.
My Actions
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Collaborated and established a multidisciplinary team with Developer Experience, Project Management, Engineering, and Business partner teams.
- Facilitated collaboration between project management and UX for feature prioritization
- Supported user feedback through the creation of extremely detailed workflow diagrams
- Positively influenced the acquisition of a business partner to further support our user audience
Objective Results:
Effectively inserted UX as a cornerstone in the creation of the product, being equally guided by business requirements, technological limitations, and user input.
Objective 6: Establish Strong Relational Bonds
The Challenge: Feedback loops were losing traction. Initial inquiries to customers revealed that the issue was not providing feedback, but rather the complexity and length of the feedback method we expected users to leverage.
My Actions
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Conducted product stakeholder alignment meetings to ensure research methods and question sets were impacting the product direction
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Audited the research methodology against the product release to ensure alignment in the question set and product direction
- Organized ​customer communication channels through sales team leads to receive ad-hoc feedback
- Advocated for improved incentives to fuel increased user feedback
Objective Results:
Feedback loops increased in response rate and quality of answers, leading to greater exposure of user insights and deeper user understanding.
The Impact & Results
Immediate Impacts:
Acquisition of Product Partners
My design efforts directly contributed to the acquisition of over 40 business partners during the development of BlackBerry IVY. Partners include but are not limited to:
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Amazon Web Studios
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Bosch
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Michellin
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Here
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Compredict
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Mahindra
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Scania
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and more...
Increase Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
My design efforts, UX advocacy, and customer monitoring techniques unequivocally improved the CSAT baseline of 30% to an average of 82%. An approximate 172% increase in customer satisfaction when using the IVY product.
Reduced product setup time
My design efforts were the root cause for the product setup time being reduced by approximately 99.7% over the entire duration of the product's life cycle.
Organizational Change
Stronger cross-functional collaboration continues within the organization to this day.
Long-term Impacts:
User-centred culture
Users continue to be central to decision-making, with research-driven processes guiding choices that impact a larger audience over the long term.
Market Leadership
BlackBerry products continue to lead certain markets due to my influence processes.
Reflections
Inform before you execute
Getting all of your ducks in a row and reflecting before delivering reduces significant headaches and churn on deliverables.
Invest in coffee chats
Building internal and external relationships outside of work builds a community of trust and transparency.
Be more involved
By eliminating truist beliefs in a system and getting involved in the nitty-gritty, course correcting is much more impactful.
Build a community
Building a community through a coffee table, or lunch games, and creative spaces removes team members from the monotony of the day-to-day dullness of simplistic tasks.
Conclusion
The BlackBerry IVY product was an incredible opportunity to work on that was incredibly complex, both technically and theoretically. This project demonstrated that effective communication and relationships always come out on top. By educating, eliminating biases, allowing for open communication channels, researching, and empathizing, we produced an industry-leading product that disrupted the entire automotive world and is now part of over 250 million vehicles worldwide.
