Summary
We’ll identify the big challenges that DesignOps people face—and begin working on addressing them together in this collaborative activity. We’ll work together in small teams to design the ultimate Design Operations organization, capture learnings, and share them with each other. Facilitated by Dave Gray and the XPLANE team.
Key Insights
-
•
The Design Ops Canvas is inspired by Alex Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas and includes embedded facilitation to guide structured conversations.
-
•
Critical categories for design ops include culture, people, practices, constraints, governance, and structure, but iteration is necessary to refine and add missing elements.
-
•
Balancing governance with creative freedom is a major challenge; Dave Kronin observes overly rigid design systems early on can stifle creativity.
-
•
Pair exercises between people unfamiliar with each other's organizations surface fresh insights and encourage cross-pollination of ideas.
-
•
Culture and communication gaps often manifest in scattered tool usage and meeting overload, as exemplified by Lynn from USC.
-
•
Executive air cover—a senior leader providing protection and support—is crucial to overcoming organizational resistance and enabling design ops success.
-
•
Measuring design ops success requires tracking how well the organization supports UX efforts, not just contractor performance, as Catherine highlights.
-
•
The canvas serves as a low-friction tool to synthesize complex organizational information in one visible place for ongoing alignment.
-
•
People and relationships lie at the heart of design ops maturity; tools facilitate but cannot replace human connections and collaboration.
-
•
Using the canvas repeatedly can anchor conversations, preventing repetitive meetings and helping teams track decisions and progress.
Notable Quotes
"You don’t have to sit through two hours a day; we’ll spend about 15 minutes on setup then you’ll pair up and do the exercise."
"Kristen wrote the book Design of Orgs for Design Orgs and her experience partly informed this canvas."
"One of the biggest challenges is balancing freedom for creative work with necessary consistency and governance, as Dave Kronin pointed out."
"If you’re having more conversation about what the actual question means than answering it, that’s a problem with the canvas we need to fix."
"The tool is designed so you can just sit down, read the questions, and get started even if you don’t have much background knowledge."
"We’re all in this together and figuring it out — making it up as we go along."
"Our communications is all over the map — email, Slack, Hangouts, face-to-face, GitHub — it surfaced some gaps we didn’t fully appreciate before."
"Executive air cover is having someone in a senior role who protects and supports the design team from other business pressures."
"Tools are a blessing and a curse; they’re not people and they can’t replace the relationships you need to get the work right."
"If you have a feeling you’re having the same conversation over and over, a canvas like this can ratchet the conversation forward."
Dig deeper—ask the Rosenbot:
More Videos
"Flat Carol was a nearly life-size cardboard cutout of Carol."
Randolph Duke IIWar Stories LIVE! Randy Duke II
March 30, 2020
"This is a moment to rethink identity beyond UX and get creative with income streams and career paths."
Corey Nelson Amy SanteeLayoffs
November 15, 2022
"Mixed methods research, combining qualitative and quantitative, gives the fullest understanding of customer experience."
Landon BarnesAre My Research Findings Actually Meaningful?
March 10, 2022
"Logic models are boring but powerful tools to align expectations that behavior change is complex and not immediate."
Amy BucherHarnessing behavioral science to uncover deeper truths
March 12, 2025
"Every piece of product can be described using components like intent, viscosity, and flow—making UX a physics problem."
David SternbergUncovering the hidden forces shaping user behavior
July 17, 2025
"Piloting your ideas before committing helps prevent disruption and saves energy in the long run."
Deanna SmithLeading Change with Confidence: Strategies for Optimizing Your Process
September 23, 2024
"Equity is equal outcomes, not just equal access to a bicycle everyone can’t necessarily ride."
Jennifer StricklandAdopting a "Design By" Method
December 9, 2021
"If adding a design program manager gives each designer back even one hour a day, you might make your entire team more efficient."
Rachel Posman John CalhounA Closer Look at Team Ops and Product Ops (Two Sides of the DesignOps Coin)
November 19, 2020
"Mirroring content by repeating back what people say helps them understand their own ideas better."
Gina MendoliaTherapists, Coaches, and Grandmas: Techniques for Service Design in Complex Systems
December 3, 2024
