IBM Research is the largest industrial research organization in the world and consequently, the forerunner in advancing computing.

Companies worldwide pay top dollar to subscribe to IBM Research for exclusive access to its findings, publications, events, and resources, enabling them to develop innovative solutions, solve complex problems, and drive innovation within their own organizations.

Subsequently, learning is a key element of an IBM Research subscription. And the two main ways of learning was through engagement with publications, and events.

Prior to working with us, IBM Research's client experience was disorganized and fragmented – with no centralized hub, all resources were sent individually via email.

This led to high cognitive load for clients, who had to devise their own methods of managing and tracking resources and events, and greatly devalued subscriptions.

Thus, my goal was to design a solution enabling clients to join, discover, and track relevant IBM events without excessive cognitive load.

To streamline access to key information and actions, essential elements such as the event title, time, date, and CTA’s would be placed within a fixed panel. Additional contextual information would be available to scroll through on the other side of the page; elements such as descriptive content, an event agenda, featured speakers module, and resources shared during the event.

Optimizing line length and allowing for ample white space created a legible and digestible experience, while large and distinctive CTA’s allowed actions to be easy to find and click.

For the scrollable half of the page, I looked to the event pages IBM had provided to pull content from.

Assessing it, I found it arduous to parse due to poor hierarchy, unclear headers, insufficient spacing, and long line lengths.

Thus, to promote clarity and digestibility, I separated the content into distinct 'About' and 'Why Attend' sections, used concise headers, shortened line lengths, and provided ample white space to differentiate content effectively.

We introduced a Featured Speakers module to event pages to excite and motivate users to attend events by providing more context into speakers’ backgrounds. Thus our goal was to ensure the section stood out, yet remained cohesive with the page.

After multiple iterations on color blocking and card details, and presenting them to the broader team, the team decided on an iteration that provided a subtle pop of color and distinction via a light grey background. I kept speaker cards white for optimal contrast and re-usability elsewhere in the application. Ample white space on the cards would also accommodate scalability for longer names, roles, employers, or for localization.

Although IBM’s original agenda format was already quite effective, I conducted additional explorations to ensure we were selecting the best approach. We ultimately chose to retain the original format for its superior scalability, making minor UI refinements to create a modern visual style, reflective of the Research Portal design system.

I also added a Resources section that appears post-event, allowing users to easily find and access documents discussed and shared during the event.

Upon registration, the Register CTA changes in color, label copy, and iconography, ensuring the change in state is highly visible, giving users greater reassurance and confidence.
The event will then be added to the users’ internal calendar, and they will be reminded of the event via email and on the day of the event within the portal.

When registration is closed, the CTA becomes inactive, meanwhile when an event is live, there is a live tag under the date tag, and the CTA denotes that the event is currently joinable.

It was essential to streamline development efforts and prioritize flexibility in my designs. Therefore, I focused on creating a modular system during iteration, enabling the construction of various states and types of pages using a minimal set of components.

After launch, our work became a finalist in Fast Company’s 2022 Innovation by Design Awards, in both the User Experience category and the Enduring Impact category! It was an outstanding accomplishment earning recognition from the broader design community, and serving as a testament not only to the quality of our work, but also our teamwork.