Rosenverse
The DesignOps Starter Kit

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.

The DesignOps Starter Kit

Gold
Wednesday, September 29, 2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Share the love for this talk
The DesignOps Starter Kit
Speakers: Michelle Chin
Link:

Summary

Starting DesignOps at an org feels exciting and daunting at the same time. People who’ve given you the green light are as excited as you - so there’s a bit of pressure to make this work well! In this talk, Michelle will provide a “starter kit” of 10 tips for beginning a DesignOps program—the 10 foundational things she's learned from establishing DesignOps at her org. Michelle includes how to prepare the program, manage expectations, ensure your success, and keep things sustainable for the long term.

Key Insights

  • Centralizing design ops responsibilities can alleviate decision fatigue among design managers and increase focus on operational initiatives.

  • Explicitly defining who makes decisions and who provides feedback prevents unclear expectations and supports smoother project execution.

  • Communicating design ops work frequently and across varied formats builds understanding and trust in an often ambiguous practice.

  • Starting with small pilots before scaling allows room for iteration and reduces risk when introducing new processes org-wide.

  • Maintaining a public and collaboratively editable backlog helps manage expectations, prioritize effectively, and capture emergent ideas.

  • Creating reusable templates and frameworks accelerates workflows and standardizes communication of complex operational concepts.

  • Regular one-on-one meetings with key stakeholders foster open communication lines critical for driving horizontal change.

  • Balancing urgent ad hoc work with longer-term goals requires careful prioritization techniques like story pointing and breaking tasks down.

  • Design ops responsibilities typically cover horizontal initiatives affecting multiple teams, while design managers handle team-specific operations.

  • Celebrating team wins strengthens relationships and encourages adoption of new processes during times of frequent organizational change.

Notable Quotes

"Everyone was doing a little bit of design ops here and there, which created a lot of gray area around decision making."

"Organic decision making doesn’t always work for high stakes efforts because design ops initiatives are often horizontal and require alignment."

"Communicate as much as possible and in different formats, because different formats resonate differently with people."

"Pilots give you flexibility to mess up and figure out answers as you go, instead of needing all answers upfront."

"A backlog helps pace and define the design ops practice, managing what’s in scope and what’s aspirational."

"Templates don’t have to be masterpieces; even simple reusable checklists and diagrams can save time and effort."

"As a design ops manager, I try to alleviate decision fatigue for design managers so they can focus on the decisions that need their input."

"I’ve found that being approachable and providing space for Q&A helps build trust and confidence in the design ops practice."

"Design ops is a lot of change management, and asking people to change again requires appreciation and celebrating wins."

"My prior experience as a tour manager helped me operationalize and mobilize teams, anticipating risks and preparing for everything."

Ask the Rosenbot
Aaron Stienstra
Leveraging Civic Design to Advance Equity and Rebuild Trust in the US Federal Government
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Carol Scott
Avoid Harming Your Team and Users: Promoting Care and Brand Reputation with Trauma-Informed UX Practices
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Amber Knabl
Empowering innovation: The critical role of inclusive product development in the AI era
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Landon Barnes
Are My Research Findings Actually Meaningful?
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Cornelius Rachieru
Handling Complexity: Framing a Scale of Design
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Matt Stone
Scaling Empathy, A Case Study in Change Management
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Kim Holt
A Salesforce Panel Discussion on Values-Driven DesignOps
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Chris Moses
Stretching the Definition of DesignOps with Product Development
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Sean Fitzell
Craft of User Research: Building Out Jobs to be Done Maps
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Sam Proulx
Accessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Crystal Yan
Building a Customer-Centric Culture
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Sahibzada Mayed
Cultivating Design Ecologies of Care, Community, and Collaboration
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Dane DeSutter
What co-speech gestures reveal about users’ thinking during interviews
2023 • Rosenfeld Community
Llewyn Paine
Coexisting with AI: A practical guide for researchers to navigate tools, ethics, and integration
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Mike Oren
Improving Democratized Research with CustomGPTs and Gems
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Audrey Crane
Shadow Design–Where Else is Design Happening in Your Organization?
2023 • Enterprise Community

More Videos

Robert Reimann

"Designing enterprise software is not just complicated to use, it’s really complicated to design."

Robert Reimann

Taming Design Complexity with UX Models

June 8, 2017

Bryce Benton

"I’m not a Python developer, I’m getting a lot of assistance from ChatGPT to help me write that."

Bryce Benton

[Demo] AI-powered UX enhancement: Aligning GitHub documentation with USWDS at Austin Public Library

June 4, 2024

Christian Rohrer

"Agile is here to stay because engineering managers won’t hire for anything else; user-centered design must fit into Agile somehow."

Christian Rohrer

Research Operations at Scale

November 7, 2017

Tricia Wang

"Designers are the most insecure function in many companies because their role—to represent people's needs—is both critical and ambiguous."

Tricia Wang

The most popular design thinking strategy is BS

January 27, 2022

Josh Clark

"The future should not be self-driving. It’s up to us, not the technology, to figure out the right way to use AI."

Josh Clark Veronika Kindred

Sentient Design, AI, and the Radically Adaptive Experience (1st of 3 seminars)

January 15, 2025

Magdalena Zadara

"Digital identity cards had a bad reputation, but when we explored further, we realized the card itself is a valuable existing asset."

Magdalena Zadara

Zero Hour: How to Get Far Quickly When Starting Your Digital Service Unit Late

November 16, 2022

Nick Cochran

"Making a simple connection and acting on it changed the course of my life for the better."

Nick Cochran

Growing in Enterprise Design through Making Connections

June 20, 2019

Briana Thomas

"The project charter is our best friend for accountability, impact, and timelines."

Briana Thomas Christina Rodriguez

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

September 30, 2021

Sheryl Cababa

"Always design a thing by thinking of its next larger context: a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment."

Sheryl Cababa Alexis Oh

Thinking in systems to address climate with Sheryl Cababa

June 12, 2024