Aaron Sickler
Work EXPERIENCE
IBM, 2006 – Present
Began employment as a design intern and grew my career within IBM. Project assignments have covered a wide range of industries and focus areas including cloud computing, solution development, education, and content management.
Designing software applications for a wide range of user roles including IT administrators, solution developers, and business users.
Leading collaborative efforts to create conceptual solutions to generate support for new projects.
Ensuring products are designed to meet customer and stakeholder needs by leading initiatives to create opportunities for critical external feedback.
Developing personas and roles, design requirements gathering, user testing, and customer research.
Senior Design Lead, 2021 - Present
Collaborate with design, development, and product management leadership as a user experience liaison to create and communicate initiatives.
Build executive support of project proposals by engaging across teams, building and presenting design playbacks.
Manage multiple design work streams, ensure quality and on-time delivery of designs to development through all phases of fidelity.
Work as a leader and mentor; providing guidance and support for junior designers across my individual teams and broader design community.
Key Projects Include:
IBM Software Central
Lead and manage all design efforts including conceptual pitching of new single experience for customers’ viewing and tracking of their IBM software usage.
IBM Multi Cloud SaaS Platform
Drive cross functional agreement and delivery of identity and access management designs for IBM SaaS subscribers.
Red Hat Marketplace
Manage existing design efforts related to account creation, access management, purchasing of software, and tracking software usage.
Design Lead, 2015 - 2021
Collaborated with software development teams to define user journeys and design solutions that directly address customer needs.
Managed and led delivery of designs to development from low fidelity design ideation to high fidelity wireframes.
Led design thinking workshops to translate users’ pain points and understand users’ needs into business requirements.
Career mentorship and design support for new hires and early career designers.
Key Projects Include:
Red Hat Marketplace
Led initial design efforts for a new marketplace to purchase IBM and third party software, focusing on account management and the purchasing process.
IBM Watson Education
Led design and conducted comprehensive user research in application of Watson technologies for educational solutions, contributing to successful signing of sponsor users and driving initial adoption.
Designer, 2007 - 2015
Collaborated across development and product management to define key user scenarios.
Delivered design work to development through all phases of fidelity for various projects supported.
Key Projects Include:
IBM Content Navigator Solutions on Cloud
Led interaction design and research for cloud-based offerings for document and workflow management.
IBM Case Manager
Led design and leveraging of IBM Case Manager to create customer solutions focused on counter-fraud management, post-emergency room healthcare management, and incident management for utility providers.
IBM Enterprise Content Management
Contributed to design of 3 separate user experiences (administrative, business application creator, and business users) for managing tasks, workflows, and document management.
SKILLS AND DESIGNER TOOLS
DESIGN Figma - Sketch - Carbon Design System - Design Thinking
WHITEBOARDING Mural - FigJam
DEVELOPMENT Agile - Cross functional collaboration - Stakeholder relationship building
PRESENTATIONS Keynote - PowerPoint - Public speaking
EDUCATION
Ball State University, Muncie, IN — Masters of Information & Communication Sciences
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN Bachelor of Arts & Science- Telecommunications
References always available upon request.