Frances Yllana
Senior Manager, Design Operations, Coforma
Frances Yllana is a design and organizational operations leader, writer and facilitator who empowers and champions people to succeed beyond their own expectations. Frances is energized by making the joy of accomplishment more accessible and equitable, so those in the communities she serves can find and share their own inspiration to drive positive change in the world around them.
Frances's range of expertise spans the areas of craft, leadership and operations, inclusive of branding, advertising, copywriting, strategy, video, illustration, digital and environmental, experience design and enterprise software. Outside of work, she is experienced in non-profit management, visioning + strategy and is highly active in multiple communities of practice. She serves as a professor of DesignOps Assembly Learning Labs and is helping to lead the DesignOps Assembly knowledge base initiative, and she also hosts the DesignOps Ed Salon webinar series for AIGA. She is also very active in organizing and producing small- or large-scale experiences for non-profit and civic missions and has been a leader of AIGA’s Design For Democracy committee and their national Get Out the Vote campaigns since 2016. She also serves as Secretary of the AIGA national board of directors.
Rosenverse talks by Frances:
" We don't do PRDs anymore; we just vibe code, but that still means putting the right prompt behind it. "
DesignOps Exposed: What do our peers really think of us?
September 11, 2025
" John and Rachel will preview powerful frameworks from their new book Design Conductors to help better define and measure design ops impact. "
Theme 2 Intro
September 24, 2024
" It’s really hard when all that tacit knowledge walks out the door every time someone leaves. "
The Big Question about Impact: A Panel Discussion
September 24, 2024
" Project pioneer organizations resist top-down control, needing design ops to provide tools allowing creative teams to pivot and adapt. "
DesignOps–Leading the Path to Parity
April 27, 2023
" Design research should be involved in setting early policy vision, not just in delivering on it later. "
D.E.A.R.R. Diaries (Discipline, Experience, Architecture, Reflection + Revolution)
November 16, 2022