IBM Partner Plus: Moderated Interviews

Challenge:

IBM's Partner Plus program focuses on recruiting and nurturing partnerships with other companies. IBM wanted to determine whether to continue investing in expensive and time-consuming graphics or switch to generic stock photography for their Partner Plus experience.

Aiming to design an experience that would use visuals in a meaningful way to engage users and create resonance, they sought Ogilvy's help in developing a study to guide their visual strategy; to identify which visual style resonated most with users to help shape IBM’s content strategy and boost engagement across partner-facing pages.

Strategy:

We invited IBM Champions, a group of IBM product experts, thought leaders, and advocates, to participate in a concept study. This method is commonly used to evaluate the feasibility, appeal, and potential success of a new product/feature before it is built. The goal was to place the participants within our ideation process and allow them to share their opinions and preferences regarding the visuals.

The study began with a benchmark, as we asked participants to share their past experiences with visuals. To describe what makes a visual resonate and valuable.

Next, participants were shown 3 design options in a randomized order, to prevent bias:

1. a graphic design

2. a stock image design

3. a combination of the above

Finally, participants were asked to choose which visual was most helpful. 

This approach allowed us to uncover the following insights to select imagery that will most effectively convey value, build emotional connection, and support partner engagement goals on IBM’s site.

Critical Insights

1. Include people: Psychologically, humans are drawn to people and want human-to-human interaction. Including social aspects can elicit an emotional response from users.

2. Reflective of our audience: Collaborative elements reinforce the purpose and goal of the Partner Plus experience

3. Illustrate collaboration: Visuals reflecting participants' own experiences fostered a sense of connection.

4. Consistent Branding: Paired with contextual information, instills trust. It is essential to reinforce branding with appropriate settings and informative visuals to enhance contextual relevance

5. Guiding Visuals: It is essential to use visuals to clearly display and reinforce the purpose and goal of the Partner Plus experience.

Impact

1. These insights were used to inform updates to IBM’s Partner Plus page design, including the selection of visuals that are more relatable, collaborative, and strategically branded.

2. IBM requested research on the lead space of IBM’s product and offered pages to understand how lead spaces with different objectives impact user engagement.

3. IBM's UX/IA team included the findings of this work in their documentation site. This site, which is hosted on an internal GitHub platform, serves as a repository for IBM's research learnings and guidelines. This site ensures the information is properly documented, making it fully accessible for use and further development.