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.

Flex Your Super Powers: When a Design Ops Team Scales to Power CX

Gold
Wednesday, September 29, 2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Share the love for this talk
Flex Your Super Powers: When a Design Ops Team Scales to Power CX
Speakers: Kate Koch and Jean-Claire Fitschen
Link:

Summary

Join the Verizon CX Design Ops team for an interactive session about uncovering your super powers, recognizing your kryptonite and flexing your skills to power a growing, global team.

Key Insights

  • Verizon CX Ops transformed from a design ops team to a global CX operations team powering 300+ roles across the enterprise.

  • Super speed represents rapid onboarding and resource planning to match the right designers to priority projects quickly.

  • Telepathy is a metaphor for proactive and consistent communication, resource capacity planning, and recruitment process improvements.

  • Super gadgets include operational tools like Jira, Airtable, and dynamic reporting, critical for scaling CX operations.

  • Flight symbolizes adopting multiple frameworks (predictive, agile, hybrid) and flexible working at global scale.

  • Super intelligence is embodied by CX Ops acting as a knowledge hub, oversharing communications to avoid gaps.

  • Super strength is demonstrated by strong cross-team partnerships and repeatable scalable processes that enhance customer experience quality.

  • Capacity planning in uncertain environments relies heavily on design systems, iterative planning, and quarterly forecasts with business partners.

  • Defining and tracking anti-patterns helps identify inefficiencies, such as ineffective meetings or communication breakdowns, enabling quick corrective action.

  • Crypto nights like burnout, silos, and too many priorities are actively managed through transparency, communication, and team support.

Notable Quotes

"We are super ops — powering 300 plus designers, researchers, and strategists globally."

"One of our superpowers is super speed: moving at the speed of light almost in onboarding and resource planning."

"Telepathy means mind-reading—proactive solutions through expanded resource capacity planning and recruitment."

"Super gadgets are our operational tools that we get really geeky about, like Jira and Airtable."

"Flight means adopting multiple models—predictive, agile, hybrid—to empower design at global scale."

"As the keepers and gatherers of knowledge, we empower others by sharing and sometimes over-sharing communications."

"Our super strength comes from partnerships and scalable, repeatable processes."

"We have crypto nights like people pleasing, perfectionism, silos, and burnout—which we watch out for carefully."

"Capacity planning is always through ever-changing uncertainty, requiring quarterly resource planning and business partnership."

"Defining anti-patterns helps us quickly identify and remedy issues like ineffective meetings or misaligned priorities."

Ask the Rosenbot
Tess Dixon
C'mon Get Happy
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Sam Proulx
SUS: A System Unusable for Twenty Percent of the Population
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Sol Mesz
Hands or Brains? How to Hire for Strategy, Strategically
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Megan Blocker
What UX research maturity looks like and how we get there [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2023 • Advancing Research Community
Daniel Korczynski
Why AI Is Bad at Research (and how to make it actually useful)
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Tara Tressel
Investigating qualitative depth of AI-moderated interviews
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Mike Oren
Why Pharmaceutical's Research Model Should Replace Design Thinking
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Eniola Oluwole
Lessons From the DesignOps Journey of the World's Largest Travel Site
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Ryan Matthew
Bridging Design and Code: AI-Powered Design System Integration
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Nicole Aleong
What UX research can learn from other research practices [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2023 • Advancing Research Community
Wendy Johansson
Be a Product Boss!
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Daniel Gloyd
Warming the User Experience: Lessons from America's first and most radical human-centered designers
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
James Rampton
The Basics of Automotive UX & Why Phones Are a Part of That Future
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Erin Weigel
Get Your Whole Team Testing to Design for Impact
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Nick Lewis
Designing and building low-carbon websites independently
2025 • Climate UX Interest Group
Sheri Byrne-Haber
Accessibility at Scale
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold

More Videos

Mark Boulton

"We have to work with the organization culture, not against it, and see what sticks."

Mark Boulton

Ops without Designers

November 7, 2018

Dr. Karl Jeffries

"I was talking with a person who said I’m like an idea machine, a 24-7 idea machine. The reply was immediate. It isn’t, you get used up and spat out."

Dr. Karl Jeffries

The Science of Creativity for DesignOps

January 8, 2024

Julie Gitlin

"The pandemic collapsed many roles onto fewer shoulders without the usual context switches, amplifying burnout risk."

Julie Gitlin Esther Raice

Design as an Agent of Digital Transformation at JPMC

June 9, 2021

Dave Malouf

"Without real business world experience, most leaders struggle with the overwhelming amount of demands placed on them."

Dave Malouf Adrienne Allnutt Jon Fukuda Dominique Ward

The Future of DesignOps

January 8, 2024

Mike Oren

"One of my biggest pet peeves is biased questions; I hate the term validation, I prefer evaluation."

Mike Oren

Improving Democratized Research with CustomGPTs and Gems

February 25, 2026

Elizabeth Sklar

"We tried hybrid sessions but quickly learned splitting virtual and in-person was better for experience."

Elizabeth Sklar Jessica Sheng

Co-creating research enablement with your tech org: a case study

March 10, 2026

Kayla Farrell

"I started spending more time understanding agent processes at a deeper level beyond just answering tactical questions."

Kayla Farrell Chelsey Glasson Sean Fitzell Jared LeClerc

What It's Like To Be a User Researcher at Compass

March 12, 2021

Matt LeMay

"Acknowledging that you can’t get other people to do things is truly the path to freedom."

Matt LeMay

You Don’t “Get” Anyone to Do Anything

December 6, 2022

Bria Alexander

"Design ops job descriptions change every three to six months depending on the company’s needs."

Bria Alexander Meredith Black Tim Gilligan

State of DesignOps Panel

October 1, 2021