IBM
Created a market validated Watson-championed
application by teachers, for teachers
Watson creator IBM worked with contracting teams in 2015 and 2016 to
create and test early concepts in the Watson Education division here in
Austin,TX. SeaLab was approached to help with a project called “Teacher
Advisor” along with a small team. This concept existed solely on paper
at the time, it was our job to create a platform centered around
Watson's capabilities and gain traction with our end users over the
course of 12 months of ongoing sprints.

Crafted an application that continuously evolved and grew over time based on teacher and stakeholder feedback as well as technological limitations and requirements.
A project with a “technology-first” approach, we had a unique challenge
of not only identifying our target audience's pain points and how best
to solve them with Teacher Advisor, but also how we could use Watson to
champion the experience.
Problem 1
How to create an application for teachers that provides market
validation for the idea itself while also being flexible enough to
grow and expand as both content and Watson capabilities grow in
parallel?
Problem 2
How to create a helpful application for teachers while also weaving
IBM's Watson and his artificial intelligence capabilities into a
core part of the experience?

Successfully Generated Enough Interest in Teacher Advisor During our MVP Project - enough to be announced on a global stage.
Watson Education division had several projects they were building out
in parallel, and Teacher Advisor was the only one that generated
enough interest and accomplished its goal of continuously gaining
traction and interest as it grew from MVP onward (the remaining
projects were shelved until a later date). It was successful enough to
be introduced by Ginni Romettey (IBM CEO) at the IBM Think 2017 Where
the world was first given a sneak peak into our not-so-little-anymore
project.




As ongoing testing showed, teachers' understanding and ability to use
Teacher Advisor continued to grow and expand over time as we added
more and more content and continued to iterate on the experience based
on feedback and testing. We were able to continuously improve by
giving ourselves concrete milestones and touchpoints with our end
users (teachers) to keep us on track and moving towards our goal.
Created an intuitive and neutral interface that Successfully Empowered Teachers.

Teacher Advisor continues to grow today! Watson has a new job!
Teacher Advisor has been considered a success and has been taken fully
in-house by IBM as of fall 2016. While originally focused on 3rd Grade
Mathematics, Teacher Advisor has now grown to include Kindergarden -
5th Grade Mathematics as well as Language Arts for the Core
Curriculum.
