Case Study: IBM achieves scalable usability benchmarking and faster research cycles with UserTesting

How IBM leverages customer insights into business success

IBM, a global technology and consulting firm with over 350,000 employees, renewed its strategic focus on user‑centered design to better understand and meet customer needs. To do that at scale across cloud, data and AI products, the company runs more than 3,000 UserTesting sessions a year to answer whether experiences are moving in the right direction, which features drive satisfaction, where task failures occur, how long key tasks take, and what drives adoption.

Led by Eric Mahlstedt, IBM’s 80+ researchers use UserTesting for moderated, unmoderated and longitudinal studies, recruit participants from the platform, and engage stakeholders through “Usability Theater” and workshops to turn videos into action. The approach produced a reliable, repeatable and scalable usability benchmarking program, reduced research lead times so teams stay ahead of design sprints, delivered cost savings for brand‑blind studies, and increased the velocity of customer insights that drive confident business decisions.

IBM

Eric Mahlstedt

Head of User Research for Cloud, Data, and AI business units