Project overview

The Agent Builder in IBM watsonx Orchestrate unlocks the ability to create generative AI agents without creating code. Users easily build agents that can answer questions grounded in tailored content and systems. Agents can be combined together for a more powerful result in one place. Users can set guardrails to help ensure that their agents behave as expected.

Goals

To replace the AI Assistant Builder experience with the new Agent Builder experience.

Build a low/no code agent building experience that minimizes the technical knowledge needed to create agentic outcomes.

Early Ideation. The canvas view was determined to be more than we could contain as an MVP but we are still working on it.

Key Responsibilities

Lead UX design strategy for IBM’s watsonx Orchestrate’s AI Agent Builder
Drive design excellence across cross-functional teams
Create the early low/mid fi designs to gather executive buy in
Scope and prioritize all design work items

Challenges

There are no clear industry patterns established for AI agent building
Our users don’t even know yet what they want to do with the technology
We had baggage from previous versions of the product that we had to replace or minimize

Critical Tradeoffs

Early on in the process we decided not to dive into a canvas/visualization, or a chat based building experience. Even though we thought they would be very impactful, and useful, we decided we couldn’t contain the work in time for our THINK conference announcement (we are currently working on both items).

Originally I was pushing for UX concept that maintained the relationships and context between agents with something like a parent/child relationship. My reasoning was based on the assumption that maintaining context would be more important than reusability, however leadership made the assumption that reusability would be more important. We are committed to observing early phase users to understand the best way to proceed.

Impact

The following are examples of impacts from IBM’s internal AskHR agent built using watsonx Orchestrate’s Agent Builder

In the first year IBM’s internal AskHR agent resolved over 100,000 employee inquiries
25% reduced time to launch of an agent vs RPA solutions meaning agents go live weeks earlier
Reportedly higher employee satisfaction and quicker onboarding of new employee’s in HR use cases

Awards

The iF DESIGN AWARD is a globally recognized and prestigious international design competition, established in 1953, that recognizes excellence in various design disciplines.

2025 iF Design Award winner

IBM watsonx Orchestrate is a generative AI and automation platform that empowers your business users by automating tasks, simplifying complex processes, and ultimately saving you and your team time and effort by making your organization more productive with the use of AI assistants and agents. IBM watsonx Orchestrate has a skills catalog with 1000s of pre-built skills to help you accomplish a wide range of tasks. You can quickly and easily create and deploy your purpose-built AI assistant with helpful conversations that help end users get work done, and build your own custom skills and workflows without the need for coding expertise.