IBM Watson®
Knowledge Catalog
IBM Watson®
Knowledge Catalog
IBM Watson®
Knowledge Catalog
IBM Watson®
Knowledge Catalog
IBM Watson® Knowledge Catalog is an enterprise metadata repository that seeks to change that by allowing users to quickly categorize, find, and share data with other members of their organization. As the single source of truth for high-quality data, this is how IBM Watson® Knowledge Catalog helps to make better business decisions and becomes a real competitive advantage.
APR. 2017—DEC. 2020 | 5 MIN. READ
AUTHOR: Robin Auer, Lead User Researcher, IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software
Today we depend on data for almost everything we do. How we shop, travel, work, and live is influenced by data and every interaction creates new data. In the last two years alone, 90 percent of the data in the world was generated. The huge swamp of data produced every single day presents a big challenge for large organizations. Most enterprise data today is either sitting in department silos, being inaccessible, or difficult to understand. In short, it is useless.
Leadership
David Townsend – Director of Design, IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software
John Bailey – Design Manager, IBM Data and AI
Emma Tucker – Offering Manager
Susanna Tai – Offering Manager
Marc Haber – Offering Manager
Sammy Schuckert – Design Lead
Marion Bruells – Visual Design Lead
Robin Auer – User Research Lead
Team members
Kathy Alvero, Rebecca Urry, Justin Park, Andreas Reich, Michael Friess, Ellice Heintze, Jess Vergara, Oliver Kauselmann, Dimitrios Giannos, Philipp Brucker, Ashley Bock, Nicole Jones, Christopher Nunez, Conrad Schmidt, Susie Park
Personas/Target Groups
Data Steward
Dominik
—
Dominik works on the management and oversight of his line of business’ data assets to help provide business users with high-quality data that is easily accessible. Together with other Data Stewards and the CDO Office, Dominik aims for a company wide data governance system.
Data Scientist
Chris
—
Chris is a data scientist working with small team of other data scientists who serve both the marketing and sales departments. She's responsible for helping to figure out the business problems that need to be solved and determining what data is applicable to solving those problems.
Business Analyst
Betty
—
Betty uses various tools to showcase and share reports. Her reports cover actionable business insights that are guiding others in making decisions for their company. She supports others to assess the data available, to understand the existing processes, and to resolve data issues.
Challenge
IBM is not new in this field. As of today, we have many offerings that serve our customers’ needs. As is the nature of all things, the challenges of our customers grew alongside our expertise and portfolio. We hit a point where our multitude of offerings became so large that we realized, “It's time to unify!”
But how do we ensure the same action behaves similarly or provides a unified user experience? How do we speak one common language to our users and align on terminology? In an enterprise environment, we are always facing complex problems that just cannot be solved on the spot. Systematically influencing the ecosystem and understanding the evolving user goals are the challenges solved through successful product design process.
In an enterprise environment, we are always facing complex problems that just cannot be solved on the spot. Systematically influencing the ecosystem and understanding the evolving user goals are the challenges solved through successful product design process.
Research
When our team was first deployed onto the project, we had no idea what data operations nor data governance were. Let's face it, designers are not data professionals. Our team managed to accelerate our learning in understanding the domain, our customers, and the everyday pains and needs of our users through heavy, enerative design research. We went out of the office to sit alongside our users, doing contextual inquiries and designing together. Through conversations with data experts, we found out that they currently spend 80% of their time answering the questions:
- Where is our data?
- What is this data about?
- Can I trust this data?
- How do I get access to this data?
This leaves only 20% for their actual work. That is what IBM Watson® Knowledge Catalog turns upside down. It serves as a single one-stop shop for data engineers, data stewards, data scientists, and business analysts to search for data they can trust.
Outcome and Impact
After gathering the aforementioned insights through highly user-centered research activities, the real challenge for the design team began. One needs to convince developers, designers, and product managers to be on the same page regarding unification; not to mention the big chunk of development and planning resources required. Integrating different products into one introduces inconsistent patterns for the user.
“Over the past 12 months we have made significant progress on the modernization and alignment of IBM’s data governance, data quality and data cataloging portfolio.”
Jay Limburn
Director & Distinguished Engineer – Offering Management, IBM Data & AI
We offer our design craft and skills, empathize with stakeholders motivations, and steer the process towards the right direction — a direction matching user goals and establishing balance between technological and business constraints.
“The Watson Knowledge Catalog is now getting to a point where it shows the next thing in data management and data governance.”
Metadata Manager
At a financial services company
