 from Galvanize, San Francisco, extracting signal from the noise. It's theCUBE covering the Apache Spark community event brought to you by IBM. Now your hosts, John Furrier and George Gilman. Okay, welcome back everyone. Thanks for watching. This is theCUBE special presentation here live in San Francisco for IBM's Spark community event live at Galvanize in San Francisco. Big day of announcements for IBM. Certainly changed in the game. Just go search IBM and see the news out there. It's just all over the place, the global impact around their commitment to Spark, and this is actually going to accelerate the industry and the ecosystem around big data. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Jeff Frick, our next guest, David Townsend, chief designer, analytics platform at IBM. Welcome to theCUBE. Hey thanks, thanks for having me. So one of the things that's happened today here in San Francisco, the center of the data science and algorithms, machine learning, it's got Berkeley, it's got Stanford, all the smart coders out here is the data, right? The data, fast data, Spark is a new engine. You have to use the automotive and just say I knew, I didn't sell them, they're a new turbo, a new feature of the engine. It's going to make things really, really impressive for developers. So data analytics is now going to be changed and IBM's commitment there. So I want to just get your take as in the design side, what's that mean for a designer? In the old days, hey, mobile, be web responsive to native mobile, different design challenges, take advantage of the handset. Now data is going to be big part of the design of the user experience. What's your take on that? How do you view that market? For me, it covers a lot. The question covers a lot right there. What I'm most excited about today is being involved at the upfront phase of this whole initiative for IBM. So design is right there at the very beginning. So we can do it right. It's not a matter of trying to get caught up with the developers a year from now, two years from now, but we're right there at the very beginning of the beginning of this, putting the design center together with the tech center and working together on how we're going to figure this out and how we're going to visualize and make it usable. Tell us about the timetable from a design standpoint. You're in a design field that's shrinking every day. It's like the iteration of software is providing great benefits. What's the challenge for a designer out there to take on not only just this mobile revolution, but now you got data. New things are going to be popping up, notifications and things of that nature. What's the challenge for the designer? It's a lot more challenging working in companies like IBM versus IntelliCom. IntelliCom, you're working on yearly cycles. I have a product release. We're releasing, let's say, the new Galaxy S7 or eight or nine. I know when that product's going to come out. I know from a physical standpoint, along with a software, a digital standpoint, when we have to be ready, when everything's going to be locked in and we're going to ship. With companies like IBM, it's always ongoing. It's always iterative. You've got constant updates, constant deadlines that are the next day, the next couple hours. It could be a week. So the biggest challenge we have is looking long-term, looking at trying to solve these problems from an end-to-end solution. What are the big obstacles that users are going to have? What are going to be the design trends from a year from now, two years from now? How are we going to be using that interface and mapping that out and making sure that we have a team of people of designers working on a long-term roadmap and, like I said, an end-to-end solution versus that quick, you know, we need to fix this right now. Let's get this updated. So it's a balancing act between the two. And then now you've got the data element, right? So it's no longer, Fred led us to joke, you know, we go from round buttons to bezel buttons to square buttons to round bezels to bezels and et cetera. But now you've got a data-driven application that not only are you going to use best practices and try to test for that interactive experience for people to engage with the app, but then based on the user behavior, based on who they are, what they do, now you add a whole another level of dynamic interaction in real-time with that UI that's completely separated from your release cycles and your kind of ongoing improvements. Very different challenge. It's a lot of challenges to take in at one time. A lot of opportunity as well, right? A lot of opportunity. That's why, again, going back to what I said at the beginning, it's a great opportunity for design and for our design organization to step up and be there at the very beginning, to do it right from the onset. And that's what we're really looking forward to right now. Harriet Freiman said earlier when we were chatting from that she's IBM marketing, she's awesome. She's in old data warehouse days and talking about comparing and contrasting this new world. And she said it used to be old and slow, now it's sexy and fast and it's kind of changed the game. So I mean, for the young people out there, what's your take on and your advice to give to someone who's breaking into the business? Because this whole announcement with IBM is about training, people are getting into the business and there is an art and a science behind the design piece. When you look at the data, it used to be all tech, even the algorithms, get the reports. Now it's much more tied into the artistic piece of it. And a lot of young people are coming into this business. What would you share with them for advice? It's an incredible opportunity, it's very difficult. Every day is a learning experience. So for a certain standpoint, what we're doing, maybe not be the flashiest application out there or the fancy thing that you wanna go work on versus your friends getting recruited by Facebook or Google or LinkedIn. But what we're doing is the hardcore underpinnings of the internet, of the apps themselves. And if you can understand this and get your head around what we're trying to do and get a handle on that, everything else in your career is gonna be very easy. And that's what I love the most about this space is the challenges that we're up against. It's very, very difficult. It's dealing with data scientists all day that's not the easiest crowd to interact with, little alone trying to understand what they're talking about. Take us through the day and the life of what you do and when you're not doing the administrative, big company thing, but when you're in the trenches with customers and the engineers, what are you working on? Because the slogan here is to start of something big in data and design, which is trying to weave in this active data piece. So take us through the day and the life of some of the cool things that you're working on. It's a lot of questioning, a lot of what can you explain that again, can you go a little bit slower for us? I'll retug a real slow, how about it? No, seriously, it's a whole new area. Seriously, that's what it is. It's, we're designers, so I've been designing products and software and hardware for 20 something years now and when I move from industry, whether it's automotive or doing phone design or watch designs, that the underlying, the process doesn't change, how you put these together, how you release a product is still the same no matter what industry you're in and what it boils down to is just being really curious and understanding the end user, having empathy for them, what is it we're trying to solve for them? So what I love is coming in and meeting with these guys and really understanding what is Spark, what is R, what is Python, what is Apache? I mean, it all just goes straight over our head. I mean, doing things with missing not a lot of information is a good decision. With 100% information, it's no brainer, right? So you're kind of working in an area where you're trying to get out in front, let's say watches for instance, where that user experience is going to be. So in a way, you're trying to get out in front on the user experience and let's take wearables, right? I mean, you can say, hey man, wearables, is it Star Trek, Scotty, beam me up? Is it what's the user experience? How do you do that? I mean, so what do you, how do you see that for folks doing it in the field of professional design? How do they get in front of the user experience? Is it just doing surveys, market research? How do you make those bets? It's all that, it's making bets on all those aspects of it. So part of it is working directly with our architects, with our data scientists within IBM, on what the technology can do, what's the future, what's the roadmap, and then getting out with our customers and spending time with them on site, whether it's at a Merrill Lynch or a US double A or American Airlines, spending time with their users and how they interact with a product and putting this together. And then mapping that against not only, quick term fixes and releases, but your long term goals and what we were talking about earlier, end to end solutions. Everyone wants to be like Apple. Since the iPhone, it's always like, hey, let's make things simple and elegant, which just sounds easy on paper, right? Cause you know, how do you reduce the steps that take someone to do something and you got to know what they want? So with the whole Apple thing, it's like, I want to make things like Apple-esque. How does a company and enterprise do that? I mean, if you were brought in kind of as a consultant, like, hey, tell me about how do I become Apple-like? I mean, from a user standpoint, how much work is involved, organization? What does someone need to do to transform? It's so hard to see you can do. The easier the product is, the more intuitive it becomes, the more harder the design challenges. And so a lot of it, for my role as chief designer, is eliminating the chaos, eliminating the randomness for designers. You know, when I came back on board to IBM, the first thing I did with my design staff is sit down as a one-to-one. I say, let me see your calendar. They wouldn't understand what I'm talking about. I go, no, seriously, let me see your calendar. And they pull it up. I go, let me see this for the week. And it'd be a series of meetings, meetings, meetings, design reviews. And I go through and I go, when do you have time to do any design work here? Your entire day is taken up with meetings or reviews or trying to track down the right person to get an answer. But there's no time set aside to actual do design and work this out. And so what I do is create an environment where you can spend your day working on design, working together as a team, design team, working with the scientists and such and figuring this out. And it's not this quick fix every day. You know, you gotta fix this icon. We gotta change the color here. What's a font gonna be? But having more long-term goals, what's the direction we really wanna take IBM? Yeah, talk, David, a little bit about, you know, contrasting kind of best practices from design. You've been in a long time. You've done cars and phones and all kinds of things versus software, especially software now where there's an opportunity to get so much data back in the process, so much different than we were talking before we went on air. You said, you know, doing an interior of a car takes a long time to ship and you don't get to change it very often. Contrasting that not only in a regular kind of software environment, but now in the age of big data and the streams of what people are doing and exterior data and how that impacts your ability to change a design, more for design, is it a distraction, is it goodness? How does that really change the balance of kind of sticking to best practices? It's creating an overall design language that we have for IBM. So we have a team of people back in Austin that are responsible for that, taking an overall holistic look and feel to the IBM design language and we build upon that. So that helps us in terms of long-term goals, helps my design team at least. You know, here's where we wanna be in a year from now. Here are the fonts, here's the color palette. Here's how we're gonna block out each page and make it simple and such and more interactive and more intuitive. And then for, you get down to our level, working with the product itself is again, going back and making sure we're working on the end-to-end solution. Not trying to keep working on these quick fixes every day. So it's just always a balancing act. You'd like to, what I tell my design managers is when we show up on Monday, let's try to make sure that this is the same thing that those designers start Monday morning is what they're working on Friday afternoon. And then when they go home and come back, the following Monday it's the same thing again. So it's not this constant chaos and randomness and all of a sudden you need to fix this or you've gotta go fly to this client right now and see what the problem is or someone needs a PowerPoint presentation by the end of the day. So it's trying to eliminate the firefights. Yeah, so they can see things through and stay on track with the creative design. Exactly. Yes. So what's the coolest thing you're working on now? Can you share some insight into the community here and some cool things you're working on? Today right now is a really, really big day for us. Again, to open up a brand new design center, a tech center to be there at the very beginning. Today we just brought some analysts and pressed people into 425 Market Street. It's the first time we showed it off. We literally moved in this weekend. So having an opportunity to come in and set something up from scratch and hopefully do it right with all the resources that IBM provides for us and the design staff that we have back in Austin building upon that, this is, to me, this is as good as it gets. And what about the customers? What's the opportunity to customers? As you look at the community of R and visualization, some cool things going on visually and shifting ground, but what are some of the things that they should be looking at from the enterprise customer or telecom customer? I think just overall, just making it intuitive and making it where anyone can use our products. And what I say, ultimate goal would be that in a couple years from now that kids in fifth grade are able to take our analytic platforms, our products, and actually use them. And that's the direction I want to take it. Right. And they probably already can. It's their dad's that had the problem with it. But it's funny that you talk about the 421 market and the investment in the new design center. I mean, we've covered forward open up a design center. A lot of automotive companies have design centers in Silicon Valley and GE has a huge software development presence out in Pleasanton. IBM already has a big established presence in the Bay Area. So for them to take the extra step of creating a new place in San Francisco around this design is pretty unique and obviously very special because they could have easily put those people in a number of campuses all over the Bay Area. We do have designers scattered throughout the Bay Area and that's probably going to be the situation going forward. But with this launch, it's a matter, it's an opportunity to take a group of designers and to continue hiring out here and embed them with the developers themselves. They're more cohesive there. Exactly. They can still work remotely. Remotely work is collaborative work. It really shows a focus to take the extra step to create the new place. I mean, IBM's a new company, but San Francisco, the actions here, it's really, it is a testament to recognizing that this is where there's some shifting waters here. They get right in there. Yeah, yeah. All right, well, David, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. I'll give you the final word of this segment. Share with the folks out there who are watching. What's the big aha for this announcement from IBM? What does it mean? This whole support, the community around Spark, what's your take on it for the folks watching who aren't here at the event or attending Spark Summit? What's the Spark insight? What's going on? I think for us, from a design standpoint, is our ultimate goal is to make data available for everyone. And going back to what I talked about before, about a goal of, in a couple years, you're taking these very complicated enterprise software platforms and people within a fifth grade, fourth grade organization, school can use it. And the old enterprise had legacy, right? So getting out of that trap of supporting legacy, kind of coming to a new world. Exactly. All right, David Townsend, chief designer, analytics platform at IBM here. And so I think we'll be right back with more coverage after this short break.