Rosenverse

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.

Breathing Room for Delight
Gold
Monday, January 8, 2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Share the love for this talk
Breathing Room for Delight
Speakers: Sharbani Dhar
Link:

Summary

Over the past few years, the digital team at AusPost has matured into one of the most well-functioning agile trains in Australia. The challenge in this journey to success was to ensure how design and discovery retain their customer centricity in an environment of rapid production. The need was to continue to be proactive instead of reactive in the approach to problem-solving. Some of the challenges were: To ensure there was enough room for the right amount of research for the right problem while ensuring rapid delivery. To ensure that all members of the team from Product to Development could collaborate like a true cross-functional team to come up with solutions to problems. To ensure the team established the right metrics that spoke to the experience. The talk will be a case study of how the Design team experimented with various methodologies to create more breathing room for design-led problem-solving in the agile train.

Key Insights

  • Early visions must balance ambition with technical feasibility to avoid unrealistic stakeholder expectations.

  • Collaborating early with engineering ensures technical constraints shape feasible designs.

  • Quick agile iterations without sufficient customer research can lead to reactive, tech-heavy solutions.

  • Cross-channel initiatives require dedicated time and space for proactive problem solving.

  • Design sprints are valuable for small focused problems but inadequate for complex, multi-dependency challenges.

  • Investing heavily in trendy methodologies without problem clarity can waste resources and stakeholder trust.

  • Separating discovery and delivery into parallel tracks creates breathing room for thoughtful design and faster delivery.

  • Connecting roles across discovery and delivery is crucial to maintain dialogue and alignment in an enterprise context.

  • Establishing a continuous culture of measuring and learning enables ongoing optimization post-delivery.

  • Flexible frameworks and push-pull partnerships allow large enterprises to tailor agile and design practices effectively.

Notable Quotes

"There’s no breathing room for design to conceive and execute a delightful solution in an enterprise."

"SAFE is essentially a software development methodology, and fitting experience design into it has been a constant trial and error."

"While we built amazing visions, it would take around three years to build the technical capabilities and integrations needed."

"Quick agile experiments made experiences technically feasible but led to tech-heavy solutions with little customer focus."

"Design sprints were good but not appropriate for our team’s maturity or complex multi-channel problems."

"Finding the right method for the problem is important; don’t drink the Kool-Aid just because the preacher says to."

"Discovery and delivery run parallel without a time dependency on each other, giving breathing room to think and act."

"Design can no longer sit in a corner and complain about not having a seat at the table; partnerships enable progress."

"A brick and mortar enterprise with multiple operations will not always have a prescribed process; you need to carve what works for you."

"It’s never over; it’s a continuous process of improvement."

Ask the Rosenbot
Michelle Morrison
Culture Design
2020 • DesignOps Community
Sabrina Mach
How to Design Your Design Operating Model
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Brigette Metzler
Research Repositories: A global project by the ResearchOps Community
2020 • Advancing Research Community
Sam Proulx
Accessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Liza Pemstein
Scaling Research Via an Ops First Model at Clever
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Dane DeSutter
Keeping the Body in Mind: What Gestures and Embodied Actions Tell You That Users May Not
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
John Calhoun
Two Sides of the DesignOps Coin: Teams Ops and Product Ops
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Bethany Brown
Rewiring operations with service design and AI
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Bria Alexander
Welcome
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Ian Swinson
Designing and Driving UX Careers
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Joseph Meersman
Sweating the Pixel: Scaling Quality through Critique
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Amanda Kaleta-Kott
The Joys and Dilemmas of Conducting UX Research with Older Adults
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Christian Crumlish
Afternoon Insights Panel
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Aiyana Bodi
Three Key Climate Initiatives and How You Can Help
2024 • Climate UX Interest Group
Louis Rosenfeld
GenAI for UXers: A Rosenbot Demo and Discussion
2025 • Rosenfeld Community

More Videos

Steve Sanderson

"Experimentation pitching must use the language and values of who you're trying to convince in the organization."

Steve Sanderson Alissa Briggs Jeff Gothelf Bill Scott

Discussion

May 14, 2015

Jason Mesut

"The Leadership Functions chart helps reflect on where you spend time, what you enjoy, and where you feel confident."

Jason Mesut Martina Hodges-Schell Jose Coronado

Unmasking Design Leadership: Navigating leadership without neglecting ourselves

October 30, 2025

Josh Clark

"LLMs talk the talk but don’t understand the meaning. They’re master impersonators without true knowledge."

Josh Clark Veronika Kindred

Sentient Design, AI, and the Radically Adaptive Experience (1st of 3 seminars)

January 15, 2025

Magdalena Zadara

"We built on whatever we could find, including technical APIs and even paper forms that had already simplified processes."

Magdalena Zadara

Zero Hour: How to Get Far Quickly When Starting Your Digital Service Unit Late

November 16, 2022

Catt Small

"Creating evergreen documents enables asynchronous influence — it’s not about being in the room all the time, it’s about having your voice heard."

Catt Small Micah Bennett Brian Carr Jessica Harllee

What's Next for ICs: Exploring Staff and Principal Designer Roles

February 22, 2024

Bria Alexander

"Even though we are virtual, we are still community and must treat each other with kindness and respect."

Bria Alexander

Opening Remarks

November 17, 2022

Ellie Krysl

"Research and insights are only part of the information schema we’re talking about. There’s a vastness of complexity in design information we need at our fingertips."

Ellie Krysl Jon Fukuda

Planned Right. Managed Right. Designed Right.

June 6, 2023

Ned Dwyer

"Everyone in the senior leadership team at Brex participates in continuous discovery monthly to build customer empathy."

Ned Dwyer Emily Stewart James Wallis

The Intersection of Design and ResearchOps

September 24, 2024

Sarah Brooks

"We began exploring the state of civic design across local, state, provincial, and national levels."

Sarah Brooks

Theme 3 Intro

December 10, 2021