It’s June 2019. I’m sitting in a conference room in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. At the end of the table are the two executives that have been tapped to lead a new endeavor on behalf of IBM’s $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat. To my right sits Neil Everette, a senior principal designer and my first hire. We’re about to provide an update on the most recent round of designs while others gather. As the meeting begins, our leadership pushes all their chips in.

2019年6月。我坐在北卡罗来纳州研究三角公园的会议室。 排在最后的是两位高管，他们代表IBM以340亿美元收购Red Hat来领导一项新的尝试。 在我右边的是尼尔·埃弗雷特(Neil Everette)，他是我的第一任高级设计师。 当其他设计聚集时，我们将提供最新一轮设计的更新。 会议开始时，我们的领导层将所有精力投入其中。

“We’re going to change the way enterprise software is bought and sold. It’s going to be consumer driven, dead simple, and driven by user experience. We’re going to build the App Store for the enterprise, leading to the consumerization of IT.”

“我们将改变买卖企业软件的方式。 它将由消费者驱动，简单而又由用户体验驱动。 我们将为企业构建App Store，从而实现IT的消费化。”

From the corner of the room someone murmurs, “People inside this company are saying this can’t be done.” There’s nothing like an early vote of confidence before a presentation.

在房间的一角有人在抱怨：“这家公司内部的人说这是行不通的 。” 演讲之前，没有比这更早的信任投票了。

Another colleague remarks, “IBM is really good at building super complicated things. You want to go to the moon? We’re the company that can make that happen. What are we not always great at is making very complicated things simple and usable.” There’s lots of nodding in agreement.

另一位同事说：“ IBM确实擅长构建超级复杂的东西。 你想去月球吗？ 我们是可以实现这一目标的公司。 我们并不总是擅长于使非常复杂的事情变得简单和可用。” 有很多点头同意。

We still haven’t presented yet.

我们还没有介绍。

云上的背景 (Background on Cloud)

IBM has made a profound commitment to the cloud. On his first official day as CEO, Arvind Krishina reiterated this, saying an ‘essential, ubiquitous hybrid cloud platform’ was critical in making the company ‘the most trusted technology partner of the 21st century.’

IBM对云做出了深刻的承诺。 在担任首席执行官的首个正式日中，Arvind Krishina重申了这一点，他说，“ 必不可少的，无处不在的混合云平台 ”对于使公司成为“ 21世纪最值得信赖的技术合作伙伴”至关重要。

For context, the cloud is a set of remotely hosted computing resources used by a client for storage and computing power. Using a mix and match cloud strategy allows companies to leverage different services, locations or providers to solve different business problems. One provider or solution might be optimized for security requirements, another for machine learning or AI. Hybrid cloud is a platform for applications and infrastructure, built on some combination of public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises IT. All of this affords companies control, scalability and portability.

就上下文而言，云是客户端用于存储和计算能力的一组远程托管的计算资源。 使用混合匹配云策略可以使公司利用不同的服务，位置或提供商来解决不同的业务问题。 一个提供程序或解决方案可能针对安全性要求进行了优化，而另一个则针对机器学习或AI进行了优化。 混合云是基于公共云，私有云和本地IT的某种组合而构建的，用于应用程序和基础架构的平台。 所有这些为公司提供了控制，可扩展性和可移植性。

In a recent survey, IBM asked enterprises about how they use the cloud today. 92% of enterprises that responded are leveraging hybrid cloud in some capacity, while 58% are using multi-cloud solutions. Only 10% of these companies can holistically and effectively manage or move applications across environments. This lack of flexibility creates major headaches and problems for businesses.

在最近的一项调查中，IBM 向企业询问了他们今天如何使用云。 做出回应的企业中有92％在一定程度上利用了混合云，而58％的企业正在使用多云解决方案。 这些公司中只有10％可以在整个环境中全面有效地管理或移动应用程序。 缺乏灵活性给企业造成了很多头疼和问题。

Red Hat OpenShift is a platform technology that enables developers to build once and deploy to any cloud using the same underlying code structure. It is this platform that is the bedrock underlying our marketplace. The Red Hat Marketplace exists so companies can find certified (legit and supported) software for OpenShift that they can try, purchase and deploy, quickly and easily to the cloud of their choice.

红帽OpenShift是一项平台技术，使开发人员可以使用相同的基础代码结构进行一次构建并部署到任何云。 正是这个平台是我们市场的基础。 红帽市场的存在使公司可以为OpenShift找到经过认证的(合法的和受支持的)软件，他们可以尝试将其快速，轻松地购买和部署到自己选择的云中。

机会的起源 (Origins of an Opportunity)

Rewind to April 2019. I get a call from Robert Uthe, a Distinguished Engineer and design champion at IBM. He tells me that he heard from Arin Bhowmick (Global Vice President and Chief Design Officer at IBM) that I was uniquely suited to lead design on a new, strategic, secret project. Robert says if I accept, I will be tasked with building, scaling and leading a best-in-class design team from the ground up. There’s a catch. I have to say yes right away.

回顾一下2019年4月。我接到IBM杰出工程师兼设计冠军Robert Uthe的电话。 他告诉我，他从Arin Bhowmick(IBM全球副总裁兼首席设计官)那里听说，我非常适合领导新的战略性秘密项目的设计。 罗伯特说，如果我接受，我将承担起建立，扩展和领导一个一流的设计团队的任务。 有一个陷阱。 我必须马上说是。

At the time of his call, I was leading design on IBM Watson Education, a Watson AI enabled edtech ‘startup’ that was incubated by IBM. Although our business unit was going through some significant challenges and changes, I was very happy in my role. Robert is vague, so he directs me to Charlie Hill to fill in more than a few blanks about this could-be opportunity. Among a company of over 350,000 employees, with thousands of designers, Charlie is the only design leader with the mantle of IBM fellow, IBM’s highest honor, distinction and eminence. He is soon to be dedicated to this project.

在他打电话时，我是IBM Watson Education的设计负责人，这是一个由Watson AI支持的edtech“启动”，由IBM孵化。 尽管我们的业务部门正在经历一些重大的挑战和变革，但我对自己的角色感到非常高兴。 罗伯特含糊不清，所以他指示我去查理·希尔(Charlie Hill)填补这个机会的空白。 在拥有35万名员工，拥有数千名设计师的公司中，查理(Charlie)是唯一拥有IBM员工风范的设计领导者，这是 IBM的最高荣誉，杰出和杰出地位。 他很快将致力于这个项目。

Charlie is equally opaque, but he emphasizes design’s unique ability to influence and lead in the vision and execution of this brand new cloud marketplace. He also spoke at length about the consumer focus of the executive team. This helps cement my choice.

查理同样不透明，但他强调设计独特的能力来影响和领导这一全新云市场的愿景和执行。 他还详细谈到了行政团队对消费者的关注。 这有助于巩固我的选择。

I’m still unsure of what I am actually signing up for. What I know for certain is I’ll learn more from working with Robert, Charlie, and Arin than I would on practically any other project or team at the company. I was in.

我仍然不确定我实际上要注册什么。 我可以肯定的是，与在Robert，Charlie和Arin的合作中，我将比在公司的任何其他项目或团队中学到更多。 我是在。

红帽市场设计团队的根源 (Roots of the Red Hat Marketplace Design Team)

After hiring Neil, we subsequently assembled our next five designers, with the goal of bringing in 15–18 by end of year. Our early core was a top heavy crew, with seniority and expertise coming out of their ears. Each of these foundational members had a critical role in helping to shape the early vision and, just as importantly, the culture of design on our team.

聘请尼尔(Neil)之后，我们随后组建了接下来的五名设计师，目标是到年底前将15-18名设计师收入囊中。 我们的早期核心人员是高层管理人员，他们耳中充满了资历和专业知识。 这些基础成员中的每一个在帮助塑造早期愿景以及我们团队的设计文化方面都起着至关重要的作用。

When I began the search for our first hires, I consulted with my boss, Robert, extensively. One of the founding members that I hired was Justin Gier. Justin came highly recommended from Robert for his unique combination of talents and is the most technical designer I’ve ever managed. Every design team needs complementary players across complementary disciplines. If we are truly going to consumerize IT, our team is going to have to know what we can simplify, what we can break, and what we can bypass entirely. Justin’s systems thinking, UX prowess and technical knowledge of cloud and kubernetes has helped our design team do this with confidence. He also designed a cloud 101 course for our new designers which helped to ramp up our collective domain knowledge and subject matter expertise. I still attend each session and learn new things every time.

当我开始寻找第一批员工时，我与老板罗伯特进行了广泛的协商。 我聘用的创始成员之一是贾斯汀·吉尔(Justin Gier)。 贾斯汀(Robert)因其独特的才能而受到罗伯特的强烈推荐，是我管理过的最技术设计师。 每个设计团队都需要跨互补学科的互补参与者。 如果我们要真正实现IT消费化，那么我们的团队将必须知道我们可以简化什么，可以打破什么以及可以完全绕开什么。 贾斯汀的系统思维，UX能力以及云和kubernetes的技术知识帮助我们的设计团队充满信心地做到了这一点。 他还为我们的新设计师设计了Cloud 101课程，这有助于提高我们的集体领域知识和主题专业知识。 我仍然参加每次会议，每次都学习新事物。

In order to maintain the velocity and breadth of work that we were tasked with covering, we were lucky enough to partner with the Austin-based product design and consulting firm Argodesign. Argo provided us with early, critical enablement — staff augmentation, diverse design expertise and a fresh, unbiased perspective. Working with IBM as a partner has its challenges. We’re not the easiest company to collaborate with, especially given the rapid growth, change and pressures that we were under. That said, we couldn’t have had a better early partner than Argo.

为了保持我们负责的工作的速度和广度，我们很幸运地与位于奥斯汀的产品设计和咨询公司Argodesign合作。 Argo为我们提供了早期的关键支持-员工扩充，多样化的设计专业知识和崭新而公正的观点。 与IBM合作伙伴面临挑战。 我们并不是最容易与之合作的公司，尤其是考虑到我们的快速增长，变化和压力。 也就是说，我们没有比Argo更好的早期合作伙伴。

仲夏领导层检查站 (Mid-Summer Leadership Checkpoint)

By July, we had an early draft of the high level UX for several important touch points — discovery, purchase and deployment. At this time, we were also working with an outside consulting firm to provide an added market POV.

到7月，我们已经针对几个重要接触点(发现，购买和部署)制定了高级UX的早期草案。 目前，我们还与一家外部咨询公司合作，以提供更多的市场POV。

One of the impediments we faced at this stage in our product journey was decision making. In these early days, we only had one product manager, and we were struggling to make a range of choices and evaluate their trade offs. Our leadership recognized this and during this workshop told us to disassociate from the fear of getting it wrong. “Make a decision and just own it. We will learn and pivot as necessary.”

我们在产品开发过程中现阶段面临的障碍之一就是决策。 在早期，我们只有一名产品经理，我们正努力做出一系列选择并评估其权衡取舍。 我们的领导层认识到了这一点，在这次研讨会上告诉我们，不要担心会出错。 “做出决定并拥有决定权。 我们将在必要时学习和发展。”

During this checkpoint, Phil Gilbert (GM of Design at IBM) assessed our early progress. In total transparency, we committed an early, highly visible miscue. Our marketplace experience was too broad, serving far too many customer types. This lack of precision, selectivity and focus came to bite us. It led to diluted use cases and undefined expectations and outcomes. It also forced a reckoning from our collective leadership:

在此检查点期间，Phil Gilbert(IBM设计总经理)评估了我们的早期进展。 总的来说，我们犯了一个早期的，明显可见的错误。 我们的市场经验太广泛了，服务了太多的客户类型。 缺乏精确性，选择性和专注性使我们深受其害。 它导致用例稀疏，不确定的期望和结果。 这也迫使我们的集体领导做出了以下估算：

“Every stakeholder in this room needs to drop what they’re doing and spend the next three days narrowing our focus.”

“这个会议室中的每个利益相关者都需要放弃他们正在做的事情，并在接下来的三天里花时间缩小我们的关注范围。”

RTP设计思维研讨会 (RTP Design Thinking Workshop)

In response, Charlie and I led a design thinking workshop with our key stakeholders. We relied heavily on IBM Design Thinking and collectively re-identified our users, as-is, pain points, and to-be scenarios. From this work, we came out with a testable set of hypothetical features that were deemed as “differentiators.”

作为回应，查理和我与我们的主要利益相关者一起主持了设计思想研讨会。 我们非常依赖IBM Design Thinking，并集体重新标识了我们的用户，现状，痛点和将来的场景。 通过这项工作，我们得出了一组可检验的假设特征，这些特征被认为是“差异化因素”。

It was these top differentiators that we quickly prototyped, tested with users, assessed feedback and led to the first golden thread — a narrative progression that showcased the core use cases and business differentiators. From this learning, we were able to scale down a field of 8–10 personas to the four that were mission-critical for our MVP.

正是这些主要的差异化因素，我们Swift进行了原型设计，与用户进行了测试，评估了反馈，并引出了第一个金线 –叙述性进展展示了核心用例和业务差异化因素。 通过这次学习，我们能够将8-10个角色的比例缩小到对我们的MVP至关重要的四个角色。

品牌— IBM与Red Hat的交集 (Branding — the intersection of IBM and Red Hat)

By November 2019, we had 13 designers, including a recently hired Creative Director. This was one of the hardest roles to fill. CDs are an anomaly across modern product teams at IBM. Finding a seasoned, personable, brand-savvy one to help bridge the critical, and still new, intersection of two formidable brands, was no small task. We could not have been more fortunate to have found Sarah Walter.

到2019年11月，我们已经有13位设计师，其中包括最近聘用的创意总监。 这是最难填补的角色之一。 CD在IBM的现代产品团队中是异常的。 找到一个经验丰富，风度翩翩，精通品牌的品牌来帮助衔接两个强大的品牌之间的关键而又新的交汇点，绝非易事。 我们最幸运的是找到了莎拉·沃尔特。

Prior to Sarah joining our team, the visual brand explorations fixated on IBM’s big blue color palette and Red Hat’s bright crimson, with the obvious combination and integration of the two. Sarah was hired around the same time as Wangui McKelvey, VP of Marketing for our new organization. She worked tirelessly with Wangui, Charlie and Corey Keller, our visual design lead, to ensure our brand expression was valuable, articulate and consistent with the voice and tone of our new initiative.

在Sarah加入我们的团队之前，视觉品牌的探索集中在IBM的大蓝色调色板和Red Hat的明亮的深红色上，两者之间明显地结合在一起。 萨拉与我们新组织的营销副总裁Wangui McKelvey大约同时被聘用。 她与视觉设计主管Wangui，Charlie和Corey Keller孜孜不倦地合作，以确保我们的品牌表达具有价值，表达力并与我们新计划的声音和语调保持一致。

我们的技术预览，即将完成的一年 (Our Technical Preview, a Year in the Making)

Several weeks ago, our team released our technical preview of the Red Hat Marketplace. It was a milestone for our team, IBM and Red Hat. Prior to our new marketplace, if you were a business building apps on the cloud, you would have to go to 6 or 7 stores to build your application. Red Hat Marketplace empowers enterprises to discover, try, buy and deploy through a one-stop shop.

几周前，我们的团队发布了红帽市场的技术预览。 对于我们的团队IBM和Red Hat来说，这是一个里程碑。 在我们进入新市场之前，如果您是在云上构建应用程序的企业，则必须去6或7家商店来构建应用程序。 红帽市场使企业能够通过一站式商店发现，尝试，购买和部署。

While our customers and the market will ultimately determine whether or not we’ve delivered on our early promise, it has been rewarding to hear our leadership extolling the virtues of our nascent product.

尽管我们的客户和市场最终将决定我们是否兑现了我们的早期承诺，但听到我们的领导层赞美我们的新生产品的美德使我感到非常高兴。

“I’ve been the head of three businesses and [of all those endeavors] I’m the most proud of the Red Hat Marketplace.”

“我一直是这三项业务的负责人，在所有这些工作中，我为红帽市场最自豪。”

第一印象 (First Impressions)

We’re always assessing the quality of our work and measuring our outcomes. As part of our pre-launch research, our design research team met with twelve senior IT leaders in enterprise organizations — individuals with insight and influence in their company’s cloud strategies and spend. These leaders served in industries as diverse as aerospace & defense, entertainment, financial services, food and beverage, healthcare provider, internet manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, real estate & utilities.

我们一直在评估工作质量并衡量结果。 作为我们启动前研究的一部分，我们的设计研究团队与企业组织中的12位高级IT领导进行了会面，这些领导对公司的云战略和支出具有洞察力和影响力。 这些领导者曾在航空航天和国防，娱乐，金融服务，食品和饮料，医疗保健提供商，互联网制造，消费品包装，房地产和公用事业等行业任职。

All participants volunteered their time in 90-minute, non-blind in-depth interviews (IDIs). Their feedback attested to a range of issues and opportunities and the following quotes are extracted from these sessions:

所有参与者都自愿参加了90分钟的非盲深入访谈(IDI)。 他们的反馈证明了一系列问题和机遇，并从这些会议中摘录了以下引文：

Navigation easier; could be used by less technical staff: “The navigation seems better than AWS and Azure. It is simpler. AWS puts emphasis on technical understanding.”

导航更容易； 可以由较少的技术人员使用： “导航似乎比AWS和Azure好。 更简单。 AWS强调技术理解。”

AWS more crowded; advanced search features are desirable: “AWS marketplace is very cluttered right now… you spend more time sending questions to AWS about where to find things. I would expect as IBM’s marketplace expands that could be a challenge. Think of the App Store. 500 apps doing the same thing.”

AWS更拥挤； 希望有高级搜索功能： “ AWS市场现在很杂乱……您花更多时间向AWS发送有关在哪里找到东西的问题。 我希望随着IBM市场的扩展，这将是一个挑战。 想想App Store。 500个应用程序在做同样的事情。”

Credibility and Usability: “The UI on Red Hat Marketplace is more intuitive than AWS or Google — more thought out.”

可信度和可用性： “ Red Hat Marketplace上的UI比AWS或Google更直观-更深思熟虑。”

“… IBM looks better — more usable and prettier. AWS is very vanilla. White on white, not very differentiated.”

“……IBM看起来更好-更实用，更漂亮。 AWS非常香草。 白底白字，差别不大。”

Ease of use: “Being able to download right from the marketplace into our developer solution. I know Salesforce does that, but this seems more intuitive.”

易于使用： “能够直接从市场下载到我们的开发人员解决方案中。 我知道Salesforce会这样做，但这看起来更直观。”

成长和早期胜利的机会 (Opportunities for Growth and Early Wins)

On a 15 person, disproportionately senior design team, I’ve struggled with finding equal enough visibility and recognition for all of our leaders. Design on Red Hat Marketplace is a team sport and certain folks have an easier time showcasing their talents given what we build first and how prominent that work is within the product. Finding ways to expose, integrate and leverage our deeply senior, talented team is a challenge that I don’t always win.

在一支由15人组成的不成比例的高级设计团队中，我一直在努力为我们所有的领导者寻找同样相等的知名度和认可度。 在Red Hat Marketplace上进行设计是一项团队运动，鉴于我们首先构建的产品以及该产品在产品中的突出地位，某些人可以更轻松地展示自己的才能。 寻找方法来展示，整合和利用我们经验丰富的资深团队是一个挑战，但我并非总是会赢。

On the other hand, I’m proud of the ways with which we fit the strengths of our designers with the needs of the project. Finding the right designers is a challenge in its own right, but identifying the things they love to do, the things they want to explore, the things that their unique talents and experience afford them and marrying them the critical needs of the business is not trivial. It’s a tricky Venn diagram and one that isn’t always proportionate. Certain spheres occupy more real estate at different times. In the end, it’s my job to ensure our designers are put in the best position to be successful and are given the room to reach their full potential.

另一方面，我为我们将设计师的实力与项目需求相结合的方式而感到自豪。 寻找合适的设计师本身就是一个挑战，但是要确定他们喜欢做的事情，他们想探索的事情，他们独特的才能和经验为他们提供的东西以及与他们结婚的关键业务需求并非易事。 这是一个棘手的维恩图，并且并不总是成比例的。 某些领域在不同时间占用更多房地产。 最后，我的工作是确保我们的设计师处于成功的最佳位置，并有充分的机会发挥自己的全部潜力。

以用户为中心的警惕 (User-Centered Vigilance)

Despite our team’s deep domain expertise in cloud computing and open source technology, experience building and managing past marketplaces, and overall familiarity with our target customers, we are not our users. It’s a mantra we have to sing ourselves to sleep with, or tattoo onto our limbs. We always have to be vigilant that we never resort to complacency around our customers.

尽管我们的团队在云计算和开源技术方面拥有深厚的领域专业知识，在构建和管理过往市场方面具有丰富的经验，并且对目标客户有全面的了解， 但我们并不是用户 。 这是我们要唱歌睡觉或四肢纹身的口头禅。 我们始终必须保持警惕，不要对客户自满。

One of the many tactics that we employ to mitigate this risk is integrating the customer voice into all facets of our design process. Through the design partner program, we establish deep, symbiotic relationships with companies looking to benefit from our solutions, but more importantly, partner in their creation. They also get the chance to influence our priorities and assist in concept validation, usability testing, contextual inquiry and design workshops.

我们采用的减轻这种风险的许多策略之一就是将客户的声音整合到我们设计过程的各个方面。 通过设计合作伙伴计划，我们与希望从我们的解决方案中受益的公司建立了深厚的共生关系，更重要的是，他们与他们的合作伙伴建立了关系。 他们还有机会影响我们的优先事项，并协助进行概念验证，可用性测试，上下文查询和设计研讨会。

躁动重塑 (Restless Reinvention)

I host a weekly design critique for our team. In the calendar invite to the meeting, I include a Latin proverb that I borrowed from my colleague at IBM, Adam Cutler. It says, “Nothing is invented and perfected at the same time.” Building digital products is evolutionary. Unlike print or hardware, where there’s cost and finality with what is deemed ready or done, we’re only just starting, and we’re a long way from perfect.

我每周为我们的团队主持一次设计评论。 在参加会议的日历邀请中，我包括我从IBM同事Adam Cutler借来的拉丁谚语。 它说，“ 没有什么是发明 ，并在同一时间 完善 。” 构建数字产品是不断发展的。 与印刷或硬件不同，在印刷或硬件方面，成本或最终成本被认为是已完成或已完成，我们才刚刚起步，与完美相比还有很长的路要走。

IBM Design Thinking embraces a methodology of constant observation, reflection and making. Everything is a prototype that we can and will learn from. We will continue to measure and monitor our design and product KPIs, evaluate our effectiveness and return to our users to ensure we’re delivering them value. I couldn’t be more excited to keep learning and evolving with our team.

IBM Design Thinking包含不断观察，反思和制作的方法。 一切都是我们可以并且将学习的原型。 我们将继续衡量和监控我们的设计和产品KPI，评估我们的有效性并返回给用户，以确保我们为他们带来价值。 继续与我们的团队一起学习和发展，我会感到无比兴奋。

If you’re interested in learning more about the Red Hat Marketplace, check it out today!

如果您有兴趣了解有关Red Hat Marketplace的更多信息， 请立即查看 ！

Colin Narver is a Senior Design Manger on IBM Cloud, Data and AI in Austin. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Colin Narver是位于奥斯丁的IBM Cloud，Data和AI的高级设计经理。 以上文章是个人的，不一定代表IBM的立场，战略或观点。