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

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
Thursday, September 30, 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 Prateek Kalli
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’s design ops team evolved into a CX ops team to better align with the company’s transformation into an experience-focused organization.

  • Centralizing and streamlining incoming project requests significantly improved the team’s ability to prioritize and onboard work quickly.

  • Using ‘superpower’ metaphors helped the team frame operational capabilities like speed, telepathy, and flight in a relatable and engaging way.

  • Teleportation as a superpower represents the team’s use of integrated data tools for real-time org design and headcount planning.

  • Telepathy relates to proactive recruitment and resource planning processes that anticipate talent needs before they arise.

  • Adopting new tools and building operational playbooks (‘super gadgets’) accelerates team productivity and scalability.

  • Flight symbolizes adaptability and the ability to pivot quickly in response to change, crucial in a large, evolving organization.

  • Super intelligence is embodied by the team’s role as a knowledge hub, sharing information to empower stakeholders and avoid communication gaps.

  • Super strength highlights the importance of resilience, strategic partnerships, customer obsession, and endurance in sustaining impact.

  • The team acknowledges ‘kryptonite’ challenges like burnout and miscommunication, emphasizing the need for clear communication and collaborative culture.

Notable Quotes

"We’re powering a 300 plus organization of designers, researchers, program managers, and strategists."

"Design ops is undergoing a transformation into a CX focused team with a refined mission to drive efficiency and customer experience excellence."

"Super speed means enabling rapid onboarding by centralizing and streamlining a previously disparate process."

"Teleportation lets us move throughout the organization by building tools that gather disparate data for real-time decision making."

"Telepathy as mind reading means proactively building a talent pipeline and improving recruitment processes."

"Flight is about adaptability – being ready to switch gears and pivot quickly in a global and changing environment."

"Super intelligence is the power to gather and share knowledge consistently to ensure no gaps in communication."

"Super strength is the resilience and endurance to partner and drive strategic impact backed by customer obsession."

"You should take risks, and if you fail, you need to fail fast and pivot immediately."

"We are stronger when we work together towards a unified goal – that’s our super healing power."

Ask the Rosenbot
John Mortimer
Panel Discussion
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Erin May
Distributed, Democratized, Decentralized: Finding a Research Model to Support Your Org
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Sarah Williams
A Framework for CX Transformation
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Jemma Ahmed
Theme 2 Intro
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Chris Geison
What's Next for Research?
2021 • Advancing Research Community
Nalini P. Kotamraju
An Organizational Story: Salesforce Lightning Design System
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Andy Polaine
What is the role of service design in product-led organizations?
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Lin Nie
When Thought-worlds Collide: Collaborating Between Research and Practice
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Sam Proulx
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Screen Readers
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Tim Frick
The journey of building a sustainable design practice
2025 • Climate UX Interest Group
Crystal Philcox
The Many Faces of Operations
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Aaron Stienstra
Leveraging Civic Design to Advance Equity and Rebuild Trust in the US Federal Government
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Jemma Ahmed
Bridge Building across Research Disciplines
2021 • Advancing Research Community
Alexia Cohen
Increasing Health Equity and Improving the Service Experience for Under-Served Latine Communities in Arizona
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Mackenzie Guinon
M.C. Escher’s UX Research Career Ladder
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Christian Crumlish
Introduction by our Conference Chair
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold

More Videos

Greg Petroff

"I know exactly this job, all its problems and dysfunctions, and I don’t want to do that anymore."

Greg Petroff

Exit Interview #1: Greg Petroff: From Silicon Valley Executive to Sonoma County Possibilitarian

September 24, 2025

George Abraham

"All our components can be data bound so the developer can point to any data source like CMS or JSON to populate UI elements naturally."

George Abraham Stefan Ivanov

Design Systems To-Go: Reimagining Developer Handoff, and Introducing App Builder (Part 2)

October 1, 2021

Jen Cardello

"Doctors don’t like using EHRs because it turns them into clerks; they’re engaging with a machine instead of a patient."

Jen Cardello

Standardizing Product Merits for Leaders, Designers, and Everyone

June 15, 2018

Joe Meersman

"The being provided the agency to experiment is an invitation to innovate."

Joe Meersman Pooria Sohi

Use AI to Drive Outcomes that Go Beyond the Design Sprint

September 25, 2024

Briana Thomas

"Dogs and spam started filling the slides. That was a sign this meeting wasn’t working anymore."

Briana Thomas Christina Rodriguez

When Design Ops Comes in H.O.T. : A Tale of a Transformed Design Org

September 30, 2021

Andy Warr

"Insight primers help you identify opportunities, customer problems, and develop strategies."

Andy Warr

Under My (Research) Umbrella: The Benefits and Challenges of Building a Unified Insights Function

March 25, 2024

Catt Small

"People are 10X-ing product development speed, but we have to ask if we’re really solving the right user problems."

Catt Small

How the most senior designers are using AI in their work right now

July 1, 2026

Alicia Mooty

"Dedicated staffing gives designers deep vertical mastery but limits horizontal experience."

Alicia Mooty

Design Staffing Models

September 30, 2021

Hugh Dubberly

"Corporations are already largely self-driving often in a bad way, operating on autopilot by policies, which requires human intervention."

Hugh Dubberly

Problems with Problems: Reconsidering the Frame of Designing as Problem-Solving

June 19, 2019