Rosenverse

Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.

Log in Create free account

100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.

Culture Design

Thursday, May 21, 2020 • DesignOps Community
Share the love for this talk
Culture Design
Speakers: Michelle Morrison
Link:

Summary

Join us for a conversation on how Dropbox is powering community programs through Design Ops. Michelle Morrison, a senior design program manager, shares how her team is thinking about community building in a time of crisis and how she frames community and culture as business problems worth solving.

Key Insights

  • Design Ops serves as a function to help makers make by setting conditions for creative freedom and removing obstacles.

  • Investing in personal passion projects like 'Permission to Speak' requires minimal budget but yields long-term brand and talent benefits.

  • Dropbox’s design team comprises around 200 people, including product designers, researchers, UX writers, and a brand studio.

  • Design Ops at Dropbox operates with roughly a 10:1 ratio of designers to project/program managers.

  • Diversity and inclusion efforts, through groups like Lady Sue Create and 3D, are crucial in fostering safe spaces and have led to 57% women in design.

  • Culture design is defined as how people act upon shared beliefs and values, distinct but complementary to HR’s role.

  • During COVID-19, pivoting to remote engagement involved piloting new community programs such as care kits and art classes for parents and kids.

  • Measuring success in design Ops includes short-term programmatic metrics and longer-term cultural and brand impact indicators.

  • Personal touches, including handwritten notes and consistent empathetic communication, deepen trust and cultural fabric especially in remote environments.

  • Sharing operational playbooks helps scale culture and diversity initiatives across teams and leadership levels.

Notable Quotes

"Design Ops is the function that helps makers make by setting an environment where designers can do their best work."

"Investing in individual pet projects really can take so many amazing shapes and cost the company very little."

"We set a goal to hit 50% women on the design team within three years and we did it."

"Culture is really how people act on their beliefs. It’s the behaviors, messages, and norms that make values true."

"Design Ops’s mission is to take the pain out of the creative process and foster a culture that supports that."

"As soon as we started working from home, I sent an urgent email to say we have to change our strategy and experiment with new things."

"100% of people responded to our care kits offer and wrote back about their experience. That sparked community connection during isolation."

"Everybody has something to say, whether it’s a personal narrative or a feature implementation. So we run writing workshops quarterly."

"You are never too busy to send a handwritten note. It deepens relationships, creates trust, and enriches the cultural fabric."

"Sharing our playbook with engineering helped push design diversity thinking beyond our own team up to the C-suite level."

Ask the Rosenbot
Saara Kamppari-Miller
"Prototype" vs "Prototype"--Breaking Down and Rebuilding Our Understanding of What We Do
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Jules Monza
Use These Words and Count These Things
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Joshua Graves
We Need To Talk: Navigating Conversations with Your Boss (Part 1 of 3)
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Dorelle Rabinowitz
The Magic Word is Trust
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Miles Orkin
Creativity and Culture
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Tricia Wang
From Users to Shapers of AI: The Future of Research
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Maria Skaaden
Continuous Design: One eye on the horizon and the other on the next wave
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Prerna Makanawala
Achieving Balanced Design Consistency
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Courtney Maya George
Scale Your Organization and Grow Your Designers
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Dianne Que
Real Talk: Proving Value through a Scrappy Playbook
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Aiyana Bodi
Three Key Climate Initiatives and How You Can Help
2024 • Climate UX Interest Group
Maggie Dieringer
Creating Consistency Through Constant Change
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Robin Beers
Panel: Excellence in Communicating Insights
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Bruce Gillespie
Learning from journalism: Balancing impactful communication with compassionate storytelling
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Bria Alexander
The Big Question about Resilience: A panel discussion
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Ariel Kennan
Building a Design Culture
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold

More Videos

Laine Riley Prokay

"The competencies allow managers to celebrate individualism while maintaining consistency across teams."

Laine Riley Prokay

How DesignOps can Drive Inclusive Career Ladders for All

September 30, 2021

Victor Udoewa

"Whiteness isn’t about color; people of all colors can reinforce white supremacy."

Victor Udoewa

Beyond Methods and Diversity: The Roots of Inclusion

March 26, 2024

Husani Oakley

"Software is eating the world, but AI is taking it to a whole new level."

Husani Oakley

Theme Three Intro

June 6, 2023

Jess Greco

"Some teams rely heavily on one or two designers who can do a bit of everything, but their depth is limited compared to core disciplines."

Jess Greco

Creating a Basis for Change: Scaling Design Maturity

June 8, 2022

Shipra Kayan

"How can we make research keep up with the speed of changes in the business?"

Shipra Kayan

Make your research synthesis speedy and more collaborative using a canvas

January 24, 2025

Prayag Narula

"If you are building a product for someone, there's always context loss when problem identification and solutioning are done by different teams."

Prayag Narula Abhinav Krishna

Dialing for Research: How to Reach the Unreachable

March 10, 2022

Sam Proulx

"When blind users choose between Android and iPhone, they weigh trade-offs between stability and customizability."

Sam Proulx

Understanding Screen Readers on Mobile: How And Why to Learn from Native Users

June 6, 2023

Amy Evans

"Async communications helped us reduce emails and meetings, improving overall efficiency."

Amy Evans

How to Create Change

September 25, 2024

Greg Petroff

"In enterprise, we’re moving from systems of record, to systems of engagement, to systems of assets where context drives experience."

Greg Petroff

Everything is About to Change: Software as Material

June 8, 2016