People First - Design at JP Morgan
Summary
Key Insights
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JP Morgan’s design operations team is global and multidisciplinary, supporting over 1,000 applications used by 2,400 developers and 200+ designers.
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Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts at JP Morgan focus on authentic representation to foster engagement and belonging within the design team.
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The future designer must be skilled in data mining, storytelling with data, and balancing technical and cultural/business aspects of design.
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Design operations has evolved from managing design systems to encompassing people processes, onboarding, retention, and professional development.
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Scaling design in a large financial institution requires separating operational tasks from hands-on management to increase efficiency and focus.
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Digital transformation is a multi-year journey that embeds design into the business culturally and operationally rather than treating design as an agency role.
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Designers from diverse backgrounds, both with financial services experience and fresh perspectives, are valuable to JP Morgan’s design practice.
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Effective design leadership partners closely with design ops to nurture teams and fuel design success through resource forecasting and reducing friction.
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User empathy for back-office and complex systems is essential for gaining designer buy-in to manage necessary but less glamorous data inputs.
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Large organizations are still evolving how to best balance roles between design ops and management, particularly regarding culture building and people care.
Notable Quotes
"When you see yourself and someone else, you see possibility, and that drives engagement and investment."
"The designer of the future will be really great at mining data, analyzing it, and telling the story with it."
"Design ops is about people, processes, and practice working together to reduce friction and help designers be productive."
"The growth of design as a critical business function has made it necessary for specialized design ops roles to support scale."
"Digital transformation is a multi-year challenge that requires commitment beyond using design as an agency."
"We need designers who can balance flexibility with ownership and bring entrepreneurial leadership to a complex landscape."
"A strong partnership between design ops and design leadership frees leaders to build relationships and focus on strategic work."
"Design is the process of moving from an existing condition to a preferred condition—a form of problem solving."
"Supporting designers with basic tools like a working laptop can be surprisingly complex but hugely impacts efficiency."
"No one organization has figured it all out; we’re all learning and evolving how to scale and integrate design effectively."
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