IBM Verify Mobile

(Work in Progress)

IBM Verify Mobile is the authentication companion app used across IBM Security Verify for MFA, credentials, and secure account access. The current v3 initiative rebuilds the app on a modern foundation with improved IA, native patterns, and a more cohesive cross-platform experience. I lead design across multiple high-impact feature areas in collaboration with global engineering, research, and product teams.

My role: Design Lead

As design lead, I shaped the vision, system foundations, and experience quality for Verify Mobile v3. My role centered on guiding decision-making across disciplines, reducing ambiguity, and ensuring that the work supported both near-term delivery and long-term platform strategy.

I facilitated co-creation sessions with iOS and Android engineers, and partnered with product leadership to ensure design outcomes supported enterprise goals. I also coordinated with visual, content, and research to modernize interaction patterns, content, and contribute new mobile components back into the Carbon Design System.

A significant part of my leadership involved navigating competing priorities, clarifying requirements, and unblocking teams when interpretations conflicted. I moved the team toward structured systems, clearer workflows, and predictable design-to-dev collaboration, which improved velocity and reduced rework across time zones.

Objective

This initiative reimagines the IBM Verify Mobile experience through the development of IBM Verify Mobile App v3. The goal is to modernize the app, streamline identity workflows, and bring clarity and confidence to enterprise users. The redesigned version:

  • Modernizes the mobile authentication experience

  • Delivers a cohesive, secure, and predictable interface

  • Reduces friction across onboarding and verification flows

  • Introduces a Digital Credential Wallet

  • Supports industry standards for secure issuance and presentation of verifiable credentials

  • Improves usability and reliability to increase adoption

Collaboration highlights

This multi-year project required deep alignment, continuous iteration, and global coordination across teams. Highlights include:

  • Cross-platform partnership with iOS and Android engineers, including dedicated on-site working time with our teammate visiting from Australia, to refine native interactions and resolve technical constraints

  • Shared sessions with visual, research, and content designers, producing mobile-first components, refined messaging, and assets that scale across the Verify ecosystem

  • A research-informed process grounded in Apple HIG, Carbon, and mobile best practices for system behavior, type hierarchy, layout, and interaction

  • Evolving collaboration workflows, moving from ad-hoc whiteboarding to structured systems, shared libraries, and clearer documentation, improving predictability and reducing design churn

  • Weekly global reviews across design, product, and engineering to validate direction, assess feasibility, and align on decisions

  • Design-system contributions, including mobile components, patterns, and tokens delivered back into Carbon for reuse across IBM Security and beyond

Outcome

As the redesign rolls out, Verify Mobile v3 delivers:

  • A modern, native-optimized mobile experience with predictable interactions and clearer workflows

  • Streamlined onboarding, authentication, and credential flows validated through research and iterative testing

  • Increased design and engineering efficiency through shared foundations, clearer requirements, and structured cross-time-zone collaboration

  • A stronger, more scalable design system with mobile patterns contributed to Carbon, supporting consistency across the broader Verify platform

  • Improved clarity, usability, and brand cohesion for enterprise users across iOS and Android

  • Early indicators of reduced friction in critical flows and stronger internal adoption of shared components

Reflection

Verify Mobile v3 represents a multi-month, multi-team effort built on collaboration, iteration, and shared problem-solving. My role focused on shaping the vision, orchestrating alignment across global teams, and building the systems and practices that enabled the work to scale.

This project reflects platform-level leadership, balancing immediate needs with long-term architecture; elevating team clarity and quality; and guiding design decisions that strengthen IBM Security’s identity ecosystem. It continues to shape a foundational experience for customers while enabling future capabilities in authentication and verifiable credentials.

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