DesignOps 101

1. What is DesignOps?
2. Who “Does” DesignOps?
3. What DesignOps “Does”
4. How DesignOps Does it
5. Why DesignOps Matters Now
6. Implementing DesignOps
7. FinalTakeaways
DesignOps 101
Table of Contents
Image: DesignOps Handbook
Copyright © 2019 evolv consulting All Rights Reserved

What is DesignOps?

Definition
• “the department (or single
person) that plans, defines, and
manages the design process
within an organization.” - Fabricio
Teixeira, UX Collective
• “everything that supports high
quality crafts, methods, and
processes.” – Dave Malouf, IXDA,
Design Ops Summit
Goals
• “designing the design practice and
building a systematic framework that
allows design to succeed at scale…[and]
explores how design can better integrate
with the enterprise” - Bryn Ray,
American Express
• “protect the time and headspace of
everyone within the design
organization—the designers, writers,
researchers, and so on—which allows
everyone to focus on their respective
craft.” - Collin Whitehead, Dropbox
DesignOps 101
What is DesignOps?

DesignOps
Visual Design
Research
Interaction Design
Content Strategy
Architecture
Design
• DesignOps = UXOps
• Encompasses all of UX, not just design.
• DesignOps vs Design Manager
• DesignOps-the-role represents a
dedicated person that can be more
focused and go in more depth on each
each of the aspects that makes a team
successful.
• Head of Design will be responsible for
the higher-level design vision within
that company.
DesignOps 101
What is DesignOps?

Who Does DesignOps?

DesignOps-the-Role
• A specific person or group of
people tasked with ensuring that
the design team is supported so
that it can focus on designing or
researching.
• Typically larger teams with higher
volume of complex projects coupled
with short timelines.
• Distributed teams
• Multiple disciplines
DesignOps-the-Mindset
• Recognizing the need for and
implementing an ecosystem, or a
set of standardized processes,
methods, and tools that support
design and allow design to scale
efficiently.
• Smaller teams where designers have
the bandwidth to share the
responsibilities.
DesignOps 101
Who “Does” DesignOps?

Relationship
Building
Understanding
of Design
Process
Organization
Project
Management
Skills
• Universal qualities and skills to look for when staffing the DesignOps Role:
• You want someone who can build cross-functional relationships while representing design, and
who understands the design process.These relationships will necessitate understanding the
product development process and product engineering principles.
• The role calls for excellent project, time, budget, and resource management, and an
understanding of different project management ideologies (like waterfall and agile, among
among others)
• Finally, this role calls for calm in ambiguous and changing environment.
DesignOps 101
Who “Does” DesignOps

Common DesignOps Roles in Mature Organizations:
• Design producers or UX producers
• Design program managers or UX program managers
• ResearchOps specialists
DesignOps 101
Who “Does” DesignOps

100 people, 8 disciplines
11 Design Program Managers + User Experience Lead
350+ people, 4 disciplines, distributed across Canada, the US, and
overseas
5 DesignOps team members + Director of User Experience
100 people, 4+ disciplines, 10 different offices across 5 continents and
8 time zones
8 DesignOps team members + Director of Design & Research
Operations
DesignOps 101
Who Does DesignOps

What DesignOps “Does”

DesignOps 101

DesignOps 101
Image: Dianne Que, Pandora

DesignOps 101
Image: DesignOps Handbook

How DesignOps Does It

Creation of a Playbook
1. The playbook serves as a
springboard and is a forcing
function to understand the
“as-is” so improvements can
be identified.
2. Alleviates the lack of clarity
around processes, tools,
roles, etc. by documenting
the information in a concise,
consolidated, and digestible
way.
DesignOps 101
How DesignOps Does it
Image: Dianne Que, Pandora

Creation and Management of a Design System
• A design system is a collection of reusable components, guided by clear
standards, that can be assembled together to build any number of applications.
applications.
• https://atlassian.design/
• 7-11 UX Design System, FRESH
• “Design systems provide a convenient, centralized, and evolving map of a
brand’s known product territories with directional pointers to help you explore
new regions.” –Chris Messina, tech evangelist and former Developer Experience
Lead at Uber
DesignOps 101
How DesignOps Does It

Why DesignOps Matters Now

• Transition from tactical to strategic partners within the organization
• Designers have been winning the fight to “be at the table” and now provide strategic
influence earlier in the process.
• As a direct result, designers have less time to design.
• Design organization structure is changing and scaling
• Distributed teams across products/projects and physical location causes disconnect
between designers within the organization and increases the need for standardized
workflows.
• “In order to manage rapidly escalating design complexities, we need to scale
design by applying our own design-thinking and user-centered methods to
design processes.” - Kate Kaplan, Nielsen Norman Group
DesignOps 101

Design Thinking
• Originally Proposed by Stanford,
popularized by IDEO
• Encourages democratization of
design and co-creation
• Design is a team sport
• Design Thinking principles
• Holistic
• User centric
• Collaborative
• Iterative
DesignOps 101
• Originally Proposed by Stanford,
popularized by IDEO
• Encourages democratization of
design and co-creation
• Design is a team sport
• Design Thinking principles
• Holistic
• User centric
• Collaborative
• Iterative
20
DesignOps 101

DesignOps 2019
Image: Kim Fellman Cohen, Pinterest

Implementing DesignOps

Safe harbor:
Designers need protection from the grind and thrash of creative development
Operating a design team at scale:
It’s no longer possible to keep everyone in sync
Craft specialization:
It’s no longer feasible for roles to blur
DesignOps 101
When is it time for DesignOps?

DesignOps 101
Two DesignOps Models:
• Operations Support
• Supports entire design team by developing processes and building systems that impact the
work at a high-level.
• Project Support
• Supports a specific project team and immerses in the day-to-day workflow for individual
projects.
• There is no one “right” way to structure DesignOps. How you choose to
implement DesignOps should be unique to the needs of your team and your
organizational structure.

“Before embarking on
DesignOps, plan internal
research (e.g., listening tours,
tours, stakeholder interviews,
and surveys) to assess the
biggest pain points and the
areas with the highest potential
ROI, and start there.” - Kate
Kaplan, Nielsen Norman Group
Use as baseline data to measure
against and show value.
DesignOps 101
Image: Kim Fellman Cohen, Pinterest

Final Takeaways

• DesignOps is a single person or team that handles all of the operational aspects
of the design organization so that the designers can focus on designing and
honing their craft.
• DesignOps matters now because design teams are providing more and more
strategic support and are solving more complex problems in fast paced,
decentralized organizations which leaves less time to actually design.
• Each organization’s implementation and chosen areas of focus of DesignOps will
vary based on the specific needs of their design team.
• Internal research (listening tours, surveys, etc.) is essential when implementing
DesignOps because it not only helps narrow the focus of the DesingOps team,
but it also provides a baseline measurement that can be used to show
improvement and value.
DesignOps 101
FinalTakeaways

DesignOps 101
• DesignOps 101 - All Speakers
• https://rosenfeldmedia.com/designopssummit2019/program/
• “What is Design Operations?” – Bryn Ray
• https://medium.com/nyc-design/what-is-design-operations-66f69eab1098
• “DesignOps 101” – Kate Kaplan
• https://www.nngroup.com/articles/design-operations-101
• “DesignOps Handbook” - Dave Malouf, Meredith Black, CollinWhitehead, Kate Battles, and Gregg Bernstein
(editor)
• https://www.designbetter.co/designops-handbook/
• “DesignOps: the questions you’re probably asking yourself now” - FabricioTeixeira
• https://uxdesign.cc/designops-the-questions-youre-probably-asking-yourself-now-fdac491bfe4f
• “What is DesignThinking andWhy is it So Popular?” – Rikke Dam andTEO Siang
• https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/what-is-design-thinking-and-why-is-it-so-popular
• “A ComprehensiveGuide to Design Systems” –Will Fanguy
• https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/guide-to-design-systems/
References

DesignOps 101

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