ai enablement

FOREWORD

I have to say, this has been one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever worked on, but it’s also been one of the most satisfying. Epic projects like this tend to be that way with me. Seeing all your hard work at the end of the project is just...chef’s kiss.


INTRODUCTION

Due to my performance as a Technical Writer and my hunger for stretch assignments, I was placed on a project within IBM where I was tasked with being a Content Strategist for a company-wide AI initiative. I was asked to build a website that housed all relevant AI information that IBM had to offer its internal employees.

My immediate project team consisted of the following people:

  • Head of Design

  • Associate Designer

  • Communications Lead/Project Manager (reporting directly to the CIO)

I worked closely with all three of these individuals throughout the process. I also worked with the larger project team to gather feedback, make changes, and get approval for my work.

PROJECT REQUIREMENT

I broke this massive effort into three major parts:

  • Review content published in various places around the IBM intranet.

  • Extract and compile what’s most critical for user success.

  • Build and design a website to house the content.

START

When I joined this effort, the Project Manager sent me a compiled list of AI content pages that needed to be parsed. The list contained about 40 sources of information. I explored each source and pulled information that I thought was needed, while also getting guidance on what was critical to keep. I compiled a running document of the content. While I was doing this, I built a MURAL project that helped me visualize it all.

Here’s the content breakdown, blurred per IBM policy.

After I visualized the content, I set out to create site outlines with different design philosophies. I presented each idea and my thinking behind them to the Project Manager and stakeholders to get their feedback and approval. You can look through the iterations here.

You can see that through each iteration, the site organization became more focused. This was because there was a lot of content in the inventory that could either be consolidated or removed due to it being a duplicate.

After I received final approval, I started building the site in a WYSIWYG-style site publisher. Below are images of the final site.

During the process, I pitched my site to stakeholders in various project calls. In the calls, I would walk through how to use the site and solicit feedback. My site was also pitched to the CAO and CIO before being published.

REACH

Now that the site is done, the Communication Lead and CIO have decided to make a communication series introducing the site to IBMers. These communications are planned to be shared with the entirety of IBM—over 300,000 employees.