IBM Watson

Project Background

I led a team that supported IBM’s entry into the AI and machine learning space in sectors such as financial services, healthcare, and government. We collaborated with the Watson team on several initiatives to advance their go-to-market strategy, including building proof-of-concept applications to demonstrate real-world use cases and designing systems that enabled developers to create with the technology.

Approach

Together with the technology and product leadership team, we built on their lean and agile methodologies to incorporate a human-centered design approach to prioritization and rapid iteration.

Outcome

Over several years of collaboration, we designed and built dozens of proof-of-concept applications that demonstrated Watson’s value to potential clients. The platforms we designed to support the growing developer community in building their Watson-powered applications contributed to the go-to-market momentum in this complex, large-scale effort.

I can’t believe what we achieved in such a short time. Our Executives from Germany were very impressed. We are so grateful for Liya’s professional facilitation, guidance and her great and lovely personality.

Margarete Wies, VP Advanced UX Design, Mercedes-Benz

Liya James is a highly passionate, energetic, and engaging user experience designer, design thinking evangelist, advocate, coach, and facilitator. She is the kind of person you want in your organization and/or on your team who guides and empowers employees of all “ranks” to transform their business and/or day-to-day work from a traditional engineering-led to a design-led culture that delivers human-centric outcomes.

Uwe Zimmermann, Senior Product Design Manager, IBM

Liya and her team have worked with me on a number of different startups to research and validate product and market opportunities. Their strategic support was invaluable especially in the early stages of developing our ideas. The insights enabled us to make rapid decisions on how to move forward with our business ideas when it really mattered.

Liya is able to quickly understand your business needs, parse the essence of the problem you're dealing with, identify creative solutions, guide you through a process to flesh them out, and then communicate it in a way that makes it seem so simple that you wonder how you missed it all along. I have worked with her in each startup I've been a part of and will surely continue to do so in the future. I can't recommend her highly enough.

Matt Garmur, Product Manager, Meta

Seth Blaustein, Founder & CEO, Dollar Donation Club