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.

Scaling Success: Paving the Path from DesignOps to VP
Gold
Wednesday, October 4, 2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Share the love for this talk
Scaling Success: Paving the Path from DesignOps to VP
Speakers: Deanna Washington , Tim Allen , Jeff Courcelle , John Maeda , Matt Raw and Erica Tjader
Link:

Summary

What happens next with your career? Engage with a panel of Design VPs as they share their leadership and career advancement journey. They’ll discuss their perception of the DesignOps practice as it's matured over the years and how DesignOps has impacted their role. You’ll learn about the leadership qualities and mindset necessary to unlock your next opportunity.

Key Insights

  • Erica Jer discovered design operations early in her career without the term, realizing operational strengths enhance design skills and leadership.

  • Jeff Corll urged integrating design ops with other operational areas like DevOps and marketing to build organizational promoters and avoid silos.

  • Matt Raw highlighted the unique power of designers to convene stakeholders around ideas, shaping agendas and fostering ownership.

  • Tim Allen identified courage and curiosity as essential, balancing conviction with openness to new perspectives, crucial amid AI disruption.

  • John Meda added audacity as a vital trait, encouraging juniors to boldly question and lead as the AI era brings unknown challenges.

  • Evangelism—willingness to cross departmental boundaries and promote design thinking—is a key skill for design professionals.

  • Proactivity combined with humility—acting without full context but listening and iterating—is fundamental for effective design work.

  • Successful design ops functions focus on solving real organizational problems like efficiency and scaling rather than selling the role itself.

  • The multiplicity of design languages creates communication barriers; simplifying and unifying design language boosts organizational understanding.

  • Design work should be made transparent and visible organization-wide to elevate UX from a utility role to strategic leadership.

Notable Quotes

"Operational strengths make me a better designer as well."

"You don’t want to silo design ops in UX; bring in DevOps, marketing ops, and others to make it a living, iterative process."

"True UX maturity means UX belongs to everyone, not just the UX team."

"Designers have the power to convene people around an idea and set the agenda."

"Courage and curiosity together help lead with kindness and make a real impact."

"Audacity means being willing to do things that seem dumb or risky because that’s how you innovate."

"Evangelism means crossing departments to show how design thinking can improve many parts of the organization."

"You’ll never have enough context; being able to act with incomplete information is a crucial skill."

"Design language is probably the worst language possible to speak because it’s so comfortable and confusing."

"Some of the best ideas come from UX, but often they’re hidden from decision makers who need to see them."

Ask the Rosenbot
Jeff Ephraim Bander
Eye Tracking Gamechanger: Why Smartphone Eye Tracking will Revolutionize Your UX Research
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Gina Mendolia
Coordinated collaboration: a Service Design & DesignOps love story
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Conference
Melissa Schmidt
How UX Research Hit It Big in Las Vegas
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
PJ Buddhari
Meet Spectrum, Adobe’s Design System
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Matt LeMay
You Don’t “Get” Anyone to Do Anything
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Alla Weinberg
Workers Are Sick of Change: The Cure is Psychological Safety
2023 • Enterprise UX 2023
Gold
Lin Nie
When Thought-worlds Collide: Collaborating Between Research and Practice
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Lily Aduana
5 Reasons to Bring Your Recruiting in-House (and How To Do It)
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Adam Thomas
Survival Metrics – Making Change in a Fast, Data-Informed, and Politically Safe Way
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Sarah Brooks
Theme Three Intro
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Saara Kamppari-Miller
Cartography for Design Communities
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Jennifer Fraser
What would Emmy Noether Do? Math, Models and Mulling in UX Research
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Erin Malone
Understanding the past to prepare for the future
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Sarah Brooks
Theme 3 Intro
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Greg Petroff
Design is the Differentiator: Bringing New Design Innovations to a Very Antiquated and Very Large Industry
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Jemma Ahmed
Democratization: Working with it, not against it [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2024 • Advancing Research Community

More Videos

Marc Fonteijn

"We design a community that would be missed if it were gone for our service design leaders."

Marc Fonteijn Ru Butler

Increase your confidence, influence, and impact (through a Professional Community)

December 3, 2024

Victor M. Gonzalez

"Universities in Latin America are doing a very bad job providing practical UX research training."

Victor M. Gonzalez

Practicing Learners and Learning Practitioners

March 10, 2021

Elana Chapman

"You don’t need to be an expert in accessibility before doing user research with people with disabilities."

Elana Chapman Li Wen Huang Divyen Sanganee Annabel Weiner

Getting started with accessibility research

February 20, 2025

Karen Pascoe

"With selfie pay, you take a picture, blink to prove it’s you alive, and authenticate in-app seamlessly and securely."

Karen Pascoe

Developing Experience Teams and Talent in the Enterprise

June 8, 2016

Dawn Ressel

"Users immediately assumed that a single identity meant our products would work together naturally, even before we proposed product connectivity."

Dawn Ressel

Full-Stack User Experiences: A Marriage of Design and Technology

June 9, 2016

Gretchen Anderson

"Working in pixels, we still have fingerprints. You all have a style. That’s a great thing."

Gretchen Anderson

Scaling the Human Center

June 8, 2017

Mila Kuznetsova

"Power dynamics exist in every session. People don’t want to be embarrassed or feel put on the spot."

Mila Kuznetsova Lucy Denton

How Lessons Learned from Our Youngest Users Can Help Us Evolve our Practices

March 9, 2022

Sam Proulx

"Including people with disabilities from day one builds a strong accessible foundation."

Sam Proulx

Accessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate

November 16, 2022

Nathan Curtis

"Onboarding is critical; the first five minutes an engineer spends working with a system defines their experience."

Nathan Curtis

Design Systems for Us: How Many One-Source(s)-of-Truth Are Enough?

January 17, 2019