Josh Kimmell

Design Principal | Designer | Experience Fanatic

Contributing patterns

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Case study

Contributing patterns

Over the years, I have influenced and contributed to the direction of dozens of design patterns and components in Carbon for IBM and Carbon for IBM Products. I was also an integral contributor for the Cloud Pak Platform initiative, guiding the direction of design patterns, including global search, the filter panel, data visualizations, and data tables.

Skills used

Leadership, project management, UX design, collaboration, prototyping

Background

The Carbon design system couldn’t meet all the requirements for every team, so they requested that teams create their own design patterns and contribute them back for the benefit of all.

Query builder

Federated search and the query builder

Analysts often have to run the same query on each of their security tools and then correlate the results together in a spreadsheet to find their answers. Many of these tools require them to learn complex proprietary query languages.

As Design Lead for Data Explorer, I spent almost a year exploring and iterating on a solution that not only allows an analyst to write a query without learning the query language, but assists them through the process.

My role

Senior Design Lead, UX and Visual designer

Impact
  • Single biggest selling point for Cloud Pak for Security
  • Saves analysts time to value
  • Distinguishes IBM from competitors

Filter panel

In 2017, I designed the Filter Panel component for Data Explorer. It is a slide-in panel containing dynamic or static filters that a user can select to narrow the focus of the data on the screen and included object count, categories, discoverability, and exclusion options.

The problem

An analyst’s job of sifting through large amounts of data to find patterns is often cumbersome and inaccurately filters out important information.

My role

Senior Design Lead, UX and Visual designer, primary contributor on the guidelines and direction of the pattern

Impact
  • Used in the majority of products across Security
  • Adopted by Carbon for IBM Products in 2022
Filter panel
Integrated interaction framework

Integrated Interaction Framework

The Integrated Interaction Framework (IIF) enables teams to build seamless workflows for customers across composable solutions, keeping them connected within the platform.

Over the years, I’ve influenced many of the components and patterns that make up the IIF, including:

  • Data decorators
  • Data fragments
My role

Senior Design Lead, UX and Visual designer

Impact

Adopted IBM-wide as a pattern on Carbon for IBM Products

Data decorator

Analysts often have to manually find, collect, and correlate any related data about a data point.

While designing the search experience in Data Explorer, I had the idea to highlight a data point so that the analyst can see that it has been previous enriched and get more information.

My role

Senior Design Lead, UX and Visual designer

Impact
  • One piece of the Integrated Interaction Framework
  • Currently used by apps and services across the Cloud Pak for Security
  • Available to all IBM product teams
Decorator

Impact

65+

Patterns and components contributed to Carbon from my projects

100%

Patterns that adhere to accessibility standards

Outstanding Innovation 
Award

Outstanding Innovation Award
Congratulations on this well deserved technical achievement award


– Haidy Perez-Francis, VP of Design, Security

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