Awards, talks, and the kind words of valued colleagues.
Awards
Individual
Team
FCB Chicago
Thought leadership
Talks, teaching, and serving the design community.
Organizational Termites
Co-presented with Dallas Hudgens of IBM Bridge Support Design. “There is no more important role a designer can play than finding tunnels through our organization that bridge silos to get better things done together.” On how to influence other teams, leadership, and the business to make things better for users.
Data-Driven Design & Behavioral Economics
Invited international talk at SoftServe’s annual experience design meetup. The IBM Design Thinking loop, its similarities to the scientific method, and the virtues of small testable hypotheses, MVPs, and accelerating the learning process through low-fidelity artifacts.
Adjunct instructor
Taught early-career and student designers the goals, practices, processes, and tactics of human-centered design every Thursday evening.
Assistant adjunct instructor
Reviewed work and provided feedback regularly to a class of novice UX designers — invited by friend and former-IBMer Cameron Sandage.
Cohort Coach
Assisted in the orientation and training of new IBM designers. Believed strongly in teaching them to fish rather than giving them a fish — and they all ended up catching their fish.
In their words
From people I’ve made things with.
On the work itself
Senior Designer, IBM Cloud platform
“His designs speak for themselves, galvanizing support across disciplines, but Brendan takes them further. He applies boundless energy, excellent facilitation skills, and an unmatched work ethic to socialize his vision and enlist co-conspirators.”
STSM, IBM Cloud Architect
“During the time we’ve worked together, his work contributed to a 20% increase in NPS scores, 2× increased conversion to paid accounts, a huge jump in IBM Cloud’s Gartner score, and more.”
Principal Product Manager, IBM Cloud
“He ties himself at the hip with user research as he brings in product management, architecture, customer-facing sellers and solution teams, developers, and executives to solve problems and produce new approaches.”
User Researcher, IBM Cloud platform
“It still blows my mind that the remarkably impactful Platform.next originated from a designer-led side project. This is incredibly rare, and wouldn’t have happened without Brendan’s strategic thinking, leadership, and zeal.”
Director, IBM Cloud platform experience
“Brendan has filled this critical role on numerous occasions — sitting at the nexus of great ideas, real client challenges, technical obstacles, and practical realities. He brilliantly navigates usability, people, and team challenges, always bringing a positive get-it-done-together mentality while refusing to budge on the need to understand the user and their goals.”
Design Director, Cloud Pak for Data
“Brendan was thorough in the analysis of the problem space, shared his expertise in systems thinking, and advocated for improvements on the information architecture and overall user experience. He was key in helping the team achieve the delivery of a project that had been lingering for over a year.”
STSM, IBM Cloud architect
“In all of our interactions, Brendan has been the guy who instantly understands the underlying business, technical, and user objectives of a new initiative and who intuitively gets how humans will interact with a solution.”
On how I lead
Director, IBM Cloud Platform Experience
“Brendan has mastered the design leadership behind the curtains approach — always positive and supportive, without compromising on important design principles and achieving awesome outcomes.”
STSM, IBM Cloud Architect
“He finds it easy to move between the worlds of development, business, and design — acting as a bridge between worlds and between people.”
Senior Designer, IBM Cloud
“IBM Cloud has many teams; it has designers and it has technical experts. But it has a large gap when it comes to best practices and strategic vision. Brendan is one of the few people willing and able to fill that gap.”
Former IBMer, now Lead Design Strategist at Genesys
“Brendan spends the necessary time understanding the specific challenges each group is facing, hearing out the individuals, and providing guidance that empowers the member to take action. He goes above and beyond ensuring each team member feels heard, supported, and safe.”
Principal Product Manager, IBM Cloud
“As a design leader, he’s absolutely one to emulate. As a practitioner, he’s found a way to bring out the best in people around him and to rely on those with expertise and bandwidth he doesn’t have. As a coworker, he’s in the top echelon of all design professionals in collaboration and care for those around him.”
Lead Product Manager, IBM Cloud platform console
“He has helped bring down silos by bringing individuals together to solve greater problems in the IBM space, because the world sees us as one IBM and he embodies that mentality — unite to get it done.”
User Researcher, IBM Cloud platform
“I’m grateful for the indispensable guidance, support, and encouragement Brendan provides to many across Public Cloud — myself included — as well as helping elevate those from underrepresented groups in the tech industry.”
User Researcher, IBM Cloud platform
“I’ve always admired how he pushes our teams’ creativity and challenges our assumptions. By seeking to understand others’ perspectives openly in team meetings, he helps resolve conflicts and brings us together.”