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Summary
In this call we speak with our foremost DesignOps community experts Meredith Black and Elyse Hornbacher. Touching on their backgrounds and the creation of the DesignOps Assembly, trends we are seeing in the community and for DesignOps in general, future trends in 2021, and why we need community now more than ever.
Key Insights
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Design operations roles vary widely based on organizational size, needs, and individual backgrounds, making a single definition elusive.
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Many successful design Ops practitioners come from non-design backgrounds, including program management, agency work, and administrative roles.
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Building and nurturing a community like Design Ops Assembly enables practitioners to avoid isolation and share best practices.
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Empathy and understanding others’ priorities are critical to gaining organizational buy-in for design processes.
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Remote work has shifted key challenges to onboarding, offboarding, maintaining culture, and facilitating informal social interactions.
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Tooling is a hot topic, with many organizations embracing Figma but also grappling with how best to utilize vendor tools and measure outcomes.
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Leadership in design Ops involves fostering psychological safety and modeling healthy work behaviors to combat burnout.
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There is growing demand for learning and development programs within design Ops to keep teams engaged and growing.
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The future of design Ops includes focusing on senior leadership development, global inclusivity, and cross-functional integration.
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Effective design Ops practitioners often act as translators between business and design languages, bridging gaps within organizations.
Notable Quotes
"I don’t come from a design background at all. It’s like my dirty secret."
"When we first started, we didn’t know what the hell we were doing and learned from each other."
"Design Ops people are always kind of in the background, wanting to help and nurture."
"There’s this friction of being a servant leader in a leadership position."
"A lot of people are just beginning and feel like, I’m not doing this alone, but I still don’t know what I’m doing."
"Showing people that design Ops will make their lives easier is key to adoption."
"I became the Whisperer of the group because I could translate what the business needs were and what the design needs were."
"Tactical empathy is critical—it takes time and effort, but it’s always worth it."
"The biggest challenge is how to facilitate casual conversations that aren’t work process focused in a virtual world."
"If you lose the human relationship aspect, then you’re not really doing design operations."
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