Rosenverse
Advice for DesignOps Employee #1

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Advice for DesignOps Employee #1

Gold
Wednesday, September 29, 2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Share the love for this talk
Advice for DesignOps Employee #1
Speakers: Amy Gawronski Zuccaro
Link:

Summary

You have heard of DesignOps. You know how it can benefit your team. Your designers are tired of chasing requirements and dealing with tooling. But you have no idea where to start with establishing the practice in your organization. This session will help you evaluate what parts of DesignOps you need to implement, and how you can start to introduce the concept to your team.

Key Insights

  • 70% of design ops teams consist of a single person, making Amy's advice widely relevant.

  • Understanding the specific problem that led to the creation of the design ops role helps prioritize early work.

  • Role boundaries between design ops and creative leadership must be established explicitly to avoid conflicts.

  • Building relationships across departments is critical, with IT and HR often being the most valuable allies.

  • Career development paths are a high-impact initial focus area for design ops in new teams.

  • Addressing research tool gaps and training can dramatically improve design maturity and stakeholder buy-in.

  • Operating in a large, bureaucratic organization requires persistence to identify and reach the right contacts.

  • Saying 'I don't know' but following up by figuring out the answer creates realistic expectations and builds trust.

  • Not being a people manager can be an advantage for design ops as it enables an objective, consultative stance.

  • Close, frequent one-on-ones build trust and uncover both personal and operational team challenges.

Notable Quotes

"I promise you they did not get up one morning and think, ah, yes, what my team needs is design ops."

"The catalyst that got your head count approved is the problem you should tackle first."

"If your head of design has been used to doing everything by themselves, establish early on what lives in your world and what lives in theirs."

"Making friends will help you in all sorts of ways. Relationship building has been about 75% of the game in my job."

"People will tell you what frustrates them. Boy, will they tell you what frustrates them."

"I am always super candid about not knowing things. I say, I don't know that, but I'll figure it out."

"Nobody has all the answers and we're human. That's okay."

"Bring the people who are blocking you into the process and have them see with their own eyes what you're doing."

"There is nothing more frustrating than showing up on day one as a new employee and then being like, well, your computer didn't come in yet."

"My job is part therapist. Career development and goals are basically asking what people want to be in five years."

Ask the Rosenbot
Wyatt Hayman
Global Research Panels
2020 • DesignOps Community
Peter Van Dijck
Hands-on AI #2: Understanding evals: LLM as a Judge
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Sam Proulx
Online Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Emily Eagle
Can't Rewind: Radio and Retail
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Catt Small
What's Next for ICs: Exploring Staff and Principal Designer Roles
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Andrew Michael
Building a Product Insights Team
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Prayag Narula
Empowering Designers to do Good Research
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Jen Briselli
Learning is the north star: service design for adaptive capacity
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Adam Cutler
People + Places + Practices = Outcomes
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Milan Guenther
A Shared Language for Co-Creating Ambitious Endeavours
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Raven Veal
Dark Metrics: Illuminating the Negative Impact of Digital Health Design
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Angelos Arnis
Our Fragmented Identity
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Lavy Kumar
Future of Work
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Daniel Gloyd
Designing Warmth
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Neema Mahdavi
Operationalizing DesignOps
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
You’ve got Gold! A Rosenverse demo with Lou Rosenfeld
2026 • Rosenfeld Community

More Videos

Darian Davis

"A common toxic behavior is glory seeking, like presenting work as your own when it was a team effort."

Darian Davis

Lessons from a Toxic Work Relationship

January 8, 2024

Indi Young

"A frustrated passenger at a delayed flight might just need acknowledgment, not dismissal."

Indi Young

Thinking styles: Mend hidden cracks in your market

January 8, 2025

Louis Rosenfeld

"If you want to make this conference better for you, just let us know in Slack — we want you to have a positive experience."

Louis Rosenfeld Bria Alexander

Day 1 Welcome

September 23, 2024

Melissa Schmidt

"The secret ingredient to making this work and scale has been identifying and empowering track leads."

Melissa Schmidt Adam Menter

How UX Research Hit It Big in Las Vegas

June 4, 2019

Kristin Skinner

"Empathy is essential now more than ever in measuring and supporting designer happiness during remote work."

Kristin Skinner Kamdyn Moore

8 Types of Measures in Design Operations

April 16, 2020

Dave Hora

"Sometimes hidden blockers come from power structures that prefer things stay the way they are."

Dave Hora

Advice for Establishing Research

December 8, 2022

Sean Fitzell

"Agents do a lot of jobs simultaneously with completely different mental contexts."

Sean Fitzell Sarah Han Kayla Farrell

Craft of User Research: Building Out Jobs to be Done Maps

March 12, 2021

Jason Mesut

"Spreadsheets for profiles across an organization become really difficult to update."

Jason Mesut

Shaping design, designers and teams

November 8, 2018

Dante Guintu

"Engagement at hiring, onboarding, and growth stages prevents talent churn."

Dante Guintu

How to Crush the Talent Crunch

September 8, 2022