 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering InterConnect 2017, brought to you by IBM. Okay, welcome back everyone. We're live in Las Vegas for IBM InterConnect 2017. This is theCUBE's three-day coverage. We're in day two, wall-to-wall coverage with theCUBE. I'm John Furrier with my co-host, Dave Vellante, our next guest is Jason Kelly. Vice President, he's a partner at IBM's global business solutions, GBS solutions and design, part of the group that brings it all together in the digital transformation for IBM. Welcome to theCUBE. Gral, I'd be here. Thanks for having me. So we were just talking about South by Southwest before we kicked on the cameras and you guys had a huge presence there. But you're at an interesting part of IBM and I want you to take a minute to explain what you do because everyone talks about, oh, UX design, you got to develop the future. It's a lot more complicated than just UX design. It's just some work involved. Take us through what this design experience concept's about and how does it work and why everyone's so buzzed up about it because it's getting a lot of traction. Great question to start with and I always get to spin that then as back to you. So as you said, UX, first thing came out, you said design and UX. So tell me, when you hear design, what do you think of? Do you think of cool ties? What are your jackets? What do you think? I think of a nice cube set up with, you know, a couple of user interface on the website. I think of devices. Dave's tie. I think of cool visuals, right? I think of movies, actually. Okay, okay. So they are things that give you some type of experience. Got to create a feeling inside, an emotion, a motive. So now we're headed in that direction. So take that emotion piece, set that to the side and think about what also came out, you said device. So it's something that you use and often when you say design now, they think of the wonderful things like- The iPhone. You got it, iPhone. They say, oh, what wonderful design. That design evokes emotion. And so when we think of emotion, take that and put that into business and think about creating an elegant solution for the outcomes of the end user in a business. Okay, so you have a business that has a problem. They need to solve it. And you want to create a solution that evokes emotion. So that as they experience, like you can't set down that phone, we don't want them to set down their IBM solutions. That's the type of design that I'm talking about. Jason, this is interesting. I love, Dave and I always talk about this in the queue when we get into this kind of like, get into the clouds and look down at the world. The computer industry has always been centered on, how many users do you have? I mean, user, are you a drug user? Are you like, what kind of user are you? Like, it's a consumer, right? So like, now you're really getting at the heart of kind of design, transcending computer, a user on a terminal, they're all consumers. So this is kind of the new normal. That's right. The new norm is the consumer being the focus. Think of, we'll go back to your phone, you think about this consumable capabilities and that consumption. You think back when we thought we were cool and you would say, this is my home office and I've got my fax machine here and I've got my- A pager. I've got my pager, I've got my telephone, I've got all these things. My stereo. You had all those and now, here it is. And who did this? This is the consumer. And so having consumable solutions that a consumer would be excited about but taking that to the enterprise at scale. At scale, did I send someone a great text? No, I was just- I was plugging in. So that- It's got a cognitive energy in it so it's designed well. Honey, bring me more milk and bread. So what we do from a consumability perspective is just that. How do you make sure that you have consumer grade solutions that the enterprise can enjoy, right? So that is key and that is what you pivot around. One of the things that we also were watching last week were the big data event that we had in Silicon Valley in conjunction with Strata Hadoop is the collision course between the big data world which tends to be analytics, Watson's got cognitive and then the cloud. You've got brute force blocking and tackling cloud under the hood, hard IT problems, in production workloads and you have the cool, sexy, sizzly web app and mobile apps, creativity, kind of coming together. So on one hand you've got creativity, you have energy, you have emotions, all this kind of outcome based consumer thinking and then you've got the hard, you know, scaffolding the iron and under the hood. Like workloads, hard stuff. So how do you balance that when you get into the design center? So it's not what people might think, oh, they got the crazy ideas and I'm going to do this, change the world, but at the end of the day you've got to go implement it. So take me through that process. So you think about implementation and we have here over the last four years established 26 plus IBM design studios globally and our clients love to come to those studios because they get to talk about what you're asking me here is that look, we have all these things, these piece parts, some things new, some things legacy. How do I take this and how do I tie it all together? They usually come with these business challenges that say, look, I have a front office and a back office and I'm trying to get all this. We go, wait a second. What you just described is really one office and in that one office at the center of all those challenges are data, typically. And you're trying to figure out how can I make this data work? And then as soon as you solve that problem, you say, wait a minute, then there's business process that's working between the front office and the back office and this middle office and then, oh wait, there's also then some regulation that I have to worry about. So now you have this crashing of these different capabilities. You have this challenge of saying how do I make the business architecture work with the technical architecture, work with my human architecture and that's where design comes in. That's where you begin to weave those things together by understanding how each one of those diverse pieces of the business work in harmony. So Jason, what are some of your favorite examples of an outcome that drove business value? So I'll use a great example and it was one with a client I was just having a wonderful dinner with last night, the Bank of the Philippine Islands. Banking has each one of these things that I've talked about, trying to be more nimble on the front end as well as having a very complicated and often regulated back end. This wonderful, wonderful client of IBM said, listen, could you come in and help me solve my data problem? Because we have a big data challenge that we're trying to, so sure, well let's understand that. Let's get under the covers of this data problem in a design workshop with them, walking them through their end users, their end users being all the way through their enterprise. They quickly, in our process, realized, wait a minute, it's not our data problem that we have, it's a startup problem. We're always going to have a data problem but we can't run like a startup, we can't move fast, we're not as agile as we think we are. We think we do DevOps but our DevOps is separate from agile and by the way, this design thinking thing is great. How do you weave all of that together? What they found then in their startup was, now that we know what our problem is, you've wowed us, we're wowed. But then how do we execute? So we use this term, if I can wow you, you will definitely then how me, right? So how do we do this? And this is where the design came in, where we said, look, now let's understand how you move like a startup which then did get under the covers with, well we need a cloud capability. We need to have some tooling like Bluemix where we can go ahead and quickly assemble those things together and we need to understand how we can apply some of our analytics and maybe even cognitive towards our clients. So that's something that started one way, here's the problem and it's data that really ended up another way and as they will tell you if you were to ask Bank of Philippine Islands, they'd say, listen, the design doesn't stop and what they've learned from us is that design never stops. Everything's a prototype in a sense and design only stops when the problem is solved and I can ask you, is the problem ever solved? No, it's the moving train every day. You've never done. The design center is really a studio, it's a great idea, I think it's phenomenal. The question I wanted to kind of probe into is how much of it is therapy for the customer to kind of, doctor, am I okay? I think what's going on with me, can you look around me? Because they're looking for that 360 blind spot and how to be innovative and so you kind of rub their shoulders, you're going to do an okay, you're going to survive and then you got to wow them. So before you wow them, you have to kind of whip them into shape and get their perspective. So how much of the percentage of time is hurting the cats in a therapeutic way or is it not a factor to then when you get that momentum going? Take us through the psychology of the buyer, your customer because I can almost imagine the opportunities is somewhat intoxicating these days. So you go, hey, I got pressure to go cloud native but I know it's going to be a disaster if I do. So you're on a great point and I like the thought of the therapy because look, it is somewhat of a doctor fill moment that they have, right? Where you sit back and what we find client after client is that sure we could tell them, here are your pain points, we're IBM, we do with thousands of clients every week, but that doesn't cause change. I mean you really have to change in the way that you're acting. So you can't really, like to use this phrase- Here's a way book, run the offense. That's right. You have a culture. And you will have some people say that you have to have a culture. So you can't think your way into a new way of acting. You have to act your way into a new way of thinking. And so that's the process is where you bring this discovery by way of using the basics of empathy and this is design thinking and it's in the core of the test. Empathy, great word. You're right. I mean business empathy is really the challenge because I hate to use the example of the parachute open and I always say to my kids pack your own parachute, learn how to pack a parachute. And not that I tease that dangerous, but it can be, I mean security breaches are one of those things where the blind trust that's out there and some opportunities to Janie's point on stage today. Trust economy. That's very true. It could be a dangerous world. So you don't want to just trust the parachute it's going to open. Yeah. Now I will say in prior life I used the parachute. I jumped an airborne ranger jumped out of planes and I always joke saying, hey no one is going to get shot out or have to jump out of an airplane today. So it'll be fine. Well I can laugh and joke, but you're right because you sit there and to any of our clients, it's not a joke. That trust economy that we're in is reality. And it has to be underlaid with the confidence that we can bring that to you. Well cloud I've said, the cloud which underpins all this is going to move at the speed of trust. If you don't trust the cloud you're not going to use it. So very true. That example you gave I want to go back to it because we talked about the emotion. So the emotion comes from what the consumer experienced in the bank that you gave that example. So take us through sort of what that outcome was. I mean it was the entire experience that was reimagined. So is that right? Well that's exactly it was the experience was when the diverse team across the bank was in one room and going through some of the exercises we take them through to use this empathy for the enterprise, right? Not just for the individual or design for a product. This is designed for an entire business. As they sit there and they look across that, what they got out of that was this thought that, wait a second, this is very complicated for my part of the business. Oh but wait, your part of the business is having similar challenges and yours as well. And then you have the aha moment like, wait, we're all having similar challenges. And this becomes the emotion. The emotion goes, wait a second, you just helped me see something that was right in front of me, was right there. Thank you, this is the Dr. Phil moment. Because then you say, oh, well, then we're doing this together. And you go yes, now let us walk you through, walk you through, walking us through what we might do together collaboratively. And that's where you get this new step change of action. So it's a business, you're a business therapist, but also can implement. Right, right, right. Because ultimately you do it, you have to make. And we have these steps where we look at how we walk through our cycle. And if you think of an infinity sign, we go through, you must understand, reflect, and make. And we have those stages of this infinity sign that you never stop going through those loops as we call it, the loop of understanding, and reflecting, and making. Jason, I want to talk about the mention of Dr. Phil moment, this empathy, really a legitimate thing that goes on. You're going to think I'm plugging Dr. Phil, right? But also a lot of customers can imagine are grounded in disappointment. I mean, the way I felt when Duke lost in the March Madness, I'm like, and then like, oh my God, how could they be out? I let them going all the way. Right, right. Kind of screws up the brackets. So that's IT. IT's a lot like, you make a bet, and sometimes it doesn't pan out, you got to be agile. So coming into the disappointment, clients come into the design center, probably with either an itch they're scratching I want to innovate, and then problems that they're trying to solve, which might be some baggage, some sort of issue. Is there a pattern that you see when the, you have prospects come through, and clients come through the design center that are consistent? Like is there a trend, a trending chart? Like top three, stacked ranked, issues fall into categorically, cloud transformation, Watson analytics, is there a trend line? And by the way, did you have Duke to go all the way? I thought they would. So in the trend that we see, there's some common things that come to mind where a client will say, I want to move faster. And none of these are going to be surprises. I need to move faster, okay? I need to be agile. I would love to be more innovative. I would like to take my innovation and put it in action. How do I do all of these things? And you'll find if you work with them, so why? Why? And we play the game of five whys. And eventually you get to what the true, the true need is, and that true need is to get to an outcome very quickly. They all have something right in front of them. And it's to be agile, innovative, and out in front of the market. All of those things require what you've already called out with the technologies, and they are just technologies. The challenge is putting them in action. So with the whys, you get to the outcome, that's the real pain point, and then you settle into a variety of solution, architectural, choices. Yes, because that architecture battle, as we hear from Jenny, it's going to be the architecture battles on cognitive, on AI, and data. And finding those three areas, that's where it has to be knit together. Enterprise strong data first, and cognitive to the core. Well said. Yeah, I was listening, Jenny. I listened to all your words and speech. They're not on any Watson for that, but I'll forget tonight after I have a few cocktails. Jason, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate the insight. I appreciate it. Appreciate the time. Be safe jumping out of the airplanes. All right. Take care, guys. Thanks so much. More live coverage here from theCUBE after the show breaks. Stay with us. Some more interviews still on day two to come. Great content here, great guests. More after the short break.