The IBM Design Process

Mitt Patel
3 min readSep 10, 2019

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Have you ever wandered what are the five steps to the design process. The five steps of the design process are: Define, Research, Ideate, Build, and Test. These five steps are interconnected to each other, but ultimately these five steps is the process in which any designers will walk down when they are making their own designs for clients.

The design process is a long, twisted, foggy, and mind-bending process in which the IBM design team go thru everytime they create something. I have looked at multiple designs that the IBM Design had created, and I was both awed, inspired, and was jealous of their work. Their designs have flow, style, creativity, and has allowed me to enjoy looking at the designs that they had made throughout the years. The IBM Design uses their own design thinking process that comes in three main stages that are split up into three sections that make up the IBM Design Process.

The Process

The first section is called The Principles of the IMB Design Process and it is used to see problems and solutions as an ongoing conversation. This section can be split up into three parts called:

  • Focusing on the user
  • Restless reinvention
  • Diverse Empowered Teams

The second section is called The Loop of the IMB Design Process and it is used to understand the present and envision the future. This section can be split up into three parts called:

  • Observe- The first one to focus on looking at the problem and building off of it
  • Reflect- Uses the design team to convert it into their own project paln
  • Make- creates a prototype and to give the prototype to the user

The third section is called The Keys of the IMB Design Process and it is used to have a great user outcomes using their scalable framework. This section is split up into three sections called

  • Hills-Align teams to achieve the complex designs
  • Playbacks-Stay aligned by providing feedback
  • Sponsor Users- Talk with users into the real work to have feedback with the client.

The IBM Design Process Thinking Model

My thoughts of the IMB Design Process

I feel like that IBM Design Process really does affect me in ways that I really didn’t think of before creating this post. I felt like that when I had first though about the IBM process, I had told my self that this looks to complicated to actually make sense to my mind, but as I go thru IBM’s design process, I feel like this design process, with each of the sections go together like a piece of the puzzle. The entire process is used to researching, create. and trying to discover new ways of creating designs that will inspire more people in the future. The process also doesn’t stop as once it goes through the design process once, it will then start over to challenge the next problem that comes its way. I also feels like this connects with the design process since both process reaches the same goal of creating something that can help humanity understand each other in a more simple and efficient way.

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Mitt Patel

Hello, my name is Mitt Patel. I am amateur designer. I love to play video games. Also, love to travel, and I have been to California, India, Mexico, and etc.