Working through difficult times… or any time
By: Anna Brunson
Tags: Watson Health, Empathy, Covid 19, Design, Community

“The ultimate measure of a man/woman is not where he/she stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he/she stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

— Martin Luther King

We are the Watson Health Design team at IBM, comprised of a diverse group of passionate individuals dedicated to bringing ethical change to healthcare needs through software solutions. We pride ourselves in being able to work across time zones and work tirelessly to provide complex healthcare solutions that would benefit physicians, patients, and ultimately impact change within the healthcare system. To our surprise, the strength of our community is now being tested during these difficult circumstances. Many challenges are beyond our control to address.

Our work-life division became blurry — melding together the time spent homeschooling our children, protecting our loved ones, and providing for aging parents and grandparents. Our perception of time slowed as we braced ourselves for the rapid news of this pandemic. The demands of home and work accelerated, and our emotional energy changed to focus on helping others and being more cautious in our daily lives. This equated to less productive intervals while facing unchanging demands. These challenges also present new opportunities.

While embracing change is part of who we are as IBMers, we’re all in uncharted territory with the pandemic’s current disruption.

As we move through this disruption, we’re reminding ourselves of who we are, what we embrace, and how we can make a difference in this new normal.

Our People

We are genuinely passionate about making a difference to our healthcare providers and the patients they serve. We embrace:

Being ethical and educated professionals who make change

Thinking “big picture,” and also about the details that add up in that picture

Advocating for design and our communities

Being clear and effective communicators who focus on good design and user experience

We create roadmaps and map ecosystems. We keep ethical responsibilities at the top of our minds. We advocate for those who can’t or won’t speak out themselves. And we are visually connecting the dots to solve problems and address user needs. But it’s the “why” behind what we’re doing that matters the most.

Our Values

Our Watson Health Design values serve as a foundation, a pillar, and a soul for those who believe in them. Values do not change through the vicissitudes and unknowns, the unexpected successes and failures, in good times and in bad times.

Our values and mission remain the same in driving for improvements in the healthcare space. We embrace the IBM purpose and values to “Be Essential” and to be dedicated to every client’s success, innovate for our company and the world, and exemplify trust and personal responsibility in all relationships. These values transcend situations, environments, cultures, and beliefs.

In Watson Health Design, we seek to enrich our IBM values through being a steward of our Watson Health Brand, espousing the IBM Design Language, and expressing our core IBMer values. All these inputs inform the principles that shape how we serve our unique healthcare community and its heroes.

We embrace the complexity of this space. We do this first and foremost by valuing its members. We’ve created the following principles to act as the guard rails that make up each product experience so that we put every effort forward to create products that are meaningful to all who use them.

These are the principles we focus on in Watson Health Design:

Accelerate Discovery : Enable medical innovation by removing friction to critical information. Understand and anticipate what is essential to people in healthcare, and help them learn it.

: Enable medical innovation by removing friction to critical information. Understand and anticipate what is essential to people in healthcare, and help them learn it. Healthier Outcomes : Be mindful that each and every design decision impacts a health outcome.

: Be mindful that each and every design decision impacts a health outcome. Augment the Experts : Use existing knowledge from the health community and experts to help them become smarter over time.

: Use existing knowledge from the health community and experts to help them become smarter over time. Build Trust : Trust is essential to the Health ecosystem, how will you build trust through everyday interactions?

: Trust is essential to the Health ecosystem, how will you build trust through everyday interactions? Insights and evidence as the backbone: Deliver quality information and insights to enable better outcomes during each healthcare touchpoint.

As designers in Watson Health, whether we are together or apart, it means so much to have a commonality that we can reach out to that serves as a touchstone. Our touchstone is our design principles. They serve as a reminder for how we show up, how we, with purpose, respect the people we serve. And how we need to take very seriously the complexities of the work that our heroes take on every day.

Jodi Cutler, Design Principal for Watson Health, Austin, TX

What has not changed and is holding us together?

In addition to our values, our teamwork and collaboration have not changed. In fact, as we work remotely full-time, the camaraderie has increased. In our daily talks, we have been experiencing an overlap of the work-life and the personal, which allows us to relate to our colleagues in a new way.

And one of the key themes here is trust. Through all of the challenges, stress, and fear, there is also comfort in connections and a shared sense of trust. We trust in the integrity of our colleagues to show empathy, to help each other thrive, and to help others be successful.

Teamwork and productivity

Given the new not-so-normal challenges of working from home, we are physically disconnected from colleagues and office spaces, and physically closer to family members during the usual working hours. It is an understatement, to say the least, that workplace productivity is being challenged.

But some things help us overcome these challenges, and our tools, workloads, team spirit, and even our caffeine addictions are still at their ever-useful levels! In fact, many of us feel that we’re collaborating and communicating more than ever and using our tools more effectively for teamwork and productivity. And we want to help others.

We are reaching out to loved ones and connecting more regularly via video conferencing, bonding while playing video games, and letting our batteries recharge. We are having more intentional fun and learning dance challenges, watching shows we could never catch up with a long commute, and supporting local businesses through retail therapy solutions. And we are taking the time to introspect through writing, walking our dogs, gardening, cooking, praying and meditating, painting, video games, and scrubbing our hands until they crack. Here are some stories on how we’re doing exactly that.

Cheerfulness and humor

Makeshift company signs, extra sunshine, and healthy nourishment all add humor and cheer.

When I was working from home, I was trying to add some funniness into my life. My roommate works at a company called Alibaba and I work at IBM. One day, I got the idea to make us company signs and stick them in front of our rooms during quarantine. What’s more, I started cooking for myself every day. I re-decorated my room so I could enjoy the sunshine every day when having meals. Phoebe Cai, UX Designer, Watson for Oncology, Shanghai

Kindness and connectedness

Birthday celebrations don’t have to be dim and dark.

My birthday was in February when the epidemic situation of COVID-19 in China was the most serious. But that situation did not make for a dim and dark birthday. On that day, when I woke up, I received tons of birthday wishes from my team, and my studio from everywhere in China. Some of them even drew cards for me and some of them made videos for me as well. It was a really warm and special birthday! Ying (Miko) Jin, Visual/UX Designer & Branding team lead, Shanghai

Teamwork and collaboration

An authentic connection can happen without ever being in the same room.

Before COVID-19 forced us all to hone our remote skills, we worked together on complex design research and strategy endeavors, leading to new innovative product offerings to serve the life sciences industry, all without ever being in the same room. We wrote a recent article about the day we finally met, and the difference between a working session and a meeting, with other tips and tricks for building connection remotely here. Frances DiMare Dailey and Siri Betts-Sonstegard, Design Research Leads, Austin and NYC

Balancing work and life

We seek leading meaningful work-life balances. And we need to be active — not passive — to make this balance be a reality. And the parameters vary! Most of us are used to being in offices and not used to working from home full time. Some of us miss the office and closer contact with our colleagues. Some of us have toddlers, or little kids, or teenage kids, or college kids. Some of us are now living with our parents. And some of us have spouses and conflicts with space and with schedules. And all of us are challenged with digital bandwidth as more people everywhere including in our own domiciles are all needing to be online.