Panel Discussion: Growing People and Teams
Summary
In this engaging panel, Courtney, El Salvador, Jason, and others shared their experiences building and leading design ops teams within large enterprises like Facebook and Twitter. They highlighted the value of diverse backgrounds in design ops, emphasizing the importance of empathy, design thinking, and flexible skill sets over rigid titles. The panelists discussed successful strategies for onboarding non-design backgrounds like business anthropology and stressed the need for hands-on immersion with designers. They also addressed motivating teams to engage in diary studies and other research methods by demonstrating business impact and visibility. The long-term career outlook for design ops was framed as a growing and strategic leadership track, bridging silos, managing operations, and potentially evolving into roles akin to chief design officers or operations leaders. Diversity and inclusion were central topics, with recommendations to create psychologically safe spaces, push for cognitive and skillset diversity early in hiring pipelines, and use the influence of design ops to ensure inclusive representation in panels and conversations. The talk closed with reflections on the unique leadership role of design ops as adaptive and resilient forces within organizations, and their power to foster transparency, candid conversations, and stronger team cultures.
Key Insights
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Design ops teams thrive by blending people from design backgrounds with those from program or business anthropology fields.
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Empathy and understanding design thinking are critical skills for design ops roles, even for those without direct design experience.
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Creating non-judgmental, open forums for team members to discuss personal and global challenges strengthens psychological safety and inclusion.
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Motivating designers to participate in diary studies and research requires leaders to communicate the organizational impact and publicly highlight these efforts.
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Design ops career paths are expanding into strategic leadership, often breaking down silos and connecting dispersed teams.
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Hiring diverse cognitive and skillset profiles early ensures healthier pipelines and authentic diversity in design teams.
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Design ops professionals can influence inclusivity by curating diverse speaker lineups and panel participants.
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Effective onboarding for non-design background hires involves immersive, hands-on interaction with designers and leveraging creative overlaps.
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Design ops roles sometimes replace product designer headcounts, reflecting their growing criticality within teams.
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Design ops leaders describe themselves as adaptable, resilient, and able to drive candid conversations that illuminate organizational issues.
Notable Quotes
"Design ops people are mutants coming at this profession from different directions."
"I like to find talent that’s the most unique and not overlapping other roles."
"I worry if people don’t appreciate the design psyche, they won’t really appreciate design ops."
"Business anthropologists have surprisingly gravitated towards design because it is such an empathetic endeavor."
"As a leader, it’s your job to be inspiring and impress upon people how much you care about their success and the organization’s success."
"Design ops is becoming a strategic role, almost like an operations officer, linking together all different experiences within the organization."
"You have to get into that clique with designers; they can become very cliquey."
"If you’re not thinking about accessibility, you shouldn’t be doing design in the first place."
"Many designers get pushed into leadership roles they're not equipped for, and design ops can help fill those gaps."
"We’re the people who can have difficult conversations and shine light on things—this is our power and we need to use it better."
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