Juan Encalada

My journey at IBM began by leading the redesign of the internal design system and scaling it across 50K sites. I currently oversee the design and UX strategy for IBM’s core intranet applications, ensuring a seamless and engaging user experience for 250K IBMers. My responsibilities include leading and coaching 12 designers across 8 product teams, partnering with cross-disciplinary stakeholders to define and prioritize product strategy and roadmaps, and defining a cohesive product vision that aligns with the IBM brand. Most recently, I led a team of 30 contributors in a 12-week AI visioning exercise to identify over 120 use cases to reduce friction and boost IBMer efficiency by leveraging IBM’s watsonx AI in our products.

In addition to my core responsibilities, I lead IBM’s Figma education initiatives and implementation strategy. As the founder of the IBM Figma Guild, a community with more than 2,200 members, I have led 3 years of bi-weekly workshops and office hours to help designers master Figma. As IBM’s Figma thought leader, I lead the strategy for over 30 major IBM Design libraries including Carbon Design System and the business-critical Carbon for AI libraries, where I consult on the creation of conversational AI patterns.