Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
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."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Culture design is the flesh that makes the bones of organizational design come alive through behaviors and interactions."
Steve ChaparroBringing Into Alignment Brand, Culture and Space
August 13, 2020
"Material Design is both a design philosophy and a framework used by almost all Google apps in some form."
Elizabeth ChurchillExploring Cadence: You, Your Team, and Your Enterprise
June 8, 2017
"When we talk about accessibility, we’re talking about language that has roots in a fierce and radical self-determination."
Sha HwangThe First Fifty Years of Civic Design
November 16, 2022
"Your job is a tool to get what you want out of life. Don’t make it more than that."
Corey Nelson Amy SanteeLayoffs
November 15, 2022
"Every AI conversation thread is important; mixing contexts confuses the AI."
Noz UrbinaRapid AI-powered UX (RAUX): A framework for empowering human designers
May 1, 2025
"Organizations say they want to break down silos but often create new ones in product teams; service design helps reconnect them."
Lavrans Løvlie Ben ReasonAsk me anything – Authors of Service Design: From Insight to Implementation
November 19, 2025
"Design roles are blurring or dead; super senior individual contributor roles are emerging as a new career path."
Peter MerholzThe 2025 State of UX/Design Organizational Health
November 12, 2025
"The Shakers’ artifacts allowed moments of silence and moments of song—balancing rationality with spirit in design."
Daniel GloydWarming the User Experience: Lessons from America's first and most radical human-centered designers
May 9, 2024
"There’s always money for software, not for people."
Louis RosenfeldCoffee with Lou
January 11, 2024
