Rosenverse
The Future of DesignOps

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 Future of DesignOps

Gold
Monday, January 8, 2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Share the love for this talk
The Future of DesignOps
Speakers: Dave Malouf , Adrienne Allnutt , Jon Fukuda and Dominique Ward
Link:

Summary

While Design Operations (DesignOps) is only a few years old as a practice, it is evolving rapidly. As we finish our 4th year at The Summit, we've seen so much change in our community of practice in this short time. So, we want to end this year's Summit with a look beyond. If we are to be resilient what are we being resilient towards. Jon Fukuda (Limina), Dominique Ward (Atlassian), and Adrienne Allnutt (LinkedIn) will share their perspectives on where DesignOps is going and why. Moderated by Dave Malouf (Northwestern Mutual). We will be fielding questions from attendees, too.

Key Insights

  • Design operations must manage design orgs like businesses, focusing on profitability defined as positive impact on humans and environment.

  • Seven failure points—value delivery, cost control, right talent, connectivity, systems, employee experience, leadership—are critical risks design ops must mitigate.

  • Design ops roles primarily manage business operations and infrastructure while design practice managers focus on strategy and innovation.

  • Adopting a service design mindset enables design ops to handle complex, multi-level systems with evolving feedback loops for long-term resilience.

  • Scaling design ops is not about growth in size but about deeply understanding nested units (individuals, teams, orgs) and optimizing them holistically.

  • Effective integration of numerous tools across workflows is essential to reduce context switching and tool fatigue in design operations.

  • Clear role definitions, shared business language, and translation between design and business priorities improve alignment and strategic decision-making.

  • Pre-mortem exercises and experience visions are effective methods for anticipating obstacles and shaping future design operations outcomes.

  • Creativity in design ops requires a balance of structure and freedom, analogous to music learning and jazz improvisation.

  • Despite AI advances, the human-centric, empathetic nature of design ops work ensures the role remains indispensable.

Notable Quotes

"Design organizations customers are their partner organizations, like engineering, product management, marketing, and the executive suite."

"Without real business world experience, most leaders struggle with the overwhelming amount of demands placed on them."

"Design ops needs to shift from reactive to proactive, envisioning a future state vision and moving from disaster recovery to continuous resilience."

"We need to create evolving system loops that incorporate feedback and allow our units of one to learn and adapt."

"Scaling is not just about more but about providing solutions at scale using nested units like Russian dolls."

"Streamlining and integrating our tools is vital to reduce fatigue and maximize team effectiveness."

"Creativity and structure go hand in hand, like learning notes and then improvising jazz in music."

"Design ops must run as a business, setting KPIs, managing budgets, and delivering measurable value."

"Minimum lovable product is a better focus than minimum viable product in design ops to deliver meaningful impact early."

"AI won't replace design ops roles because we are building for real human needs requiring empathy and human creativity."

Ask the Rosenbot
Santiago Bustelo
Bridging the Gap Between Compliance and Design Quality
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Sofia Quintero
The Product Philosophy Behind EnjoyHQ
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Opening Remarks
2023 • Design in Product 2023
Gold
Christian Bason
Expand—Rethinking Design for Public Challenges
2022 • Civic Design Community
Yunyan Li
UX Best Practices
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Sarah Kinkade
Design Management Models in the Face of Transformation
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Theresa Neil
Designing for Wellness: Specializing in Healthcare
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Michelle Chin
The DesignOps Starter Kit
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Lija Hogan
Three Years Out: Perspectives on the Near-Term Future of User Research
2024 • Advancing Research Community
Bryce Benton
[Demo] AI-powered UX enhancement: Aligning GitHub documentation with USWDS at Austin Public Library
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Mark Boulton
Ops without Designers
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Nathan Curtis
Discussion
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Jorge Arango
Scale Smart: AI-Powered Content Organization Strategies
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Raven Veal
Dark Metrics: Illuminating the Negative Impact of Digital Health Design
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Heidi Trost
To Protect People, You Have to Protect Information: A Human-Centered Design Approach to Cybersecurity
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Michael Weir
Mixed Methods and Behavioural Science
2023 • Rosenfeld Community

More Videos

Yoel Sumitro

"Knowing in action is the intuition practiced by competent designers, a core of artistry."

Yoel Sumitro

Actions and Reflections: Bridging the Skills Gap among Researchers

March 9, 2022

Theresa Neil

"Our general public, even advanced enterprise users, often struggle to interpret even the most basic charts."

Theresa Neil

Just Build Me a Dashboard!

April 9, 2019

Brigette Metzler

"Having a repo isn’t the same as having a strategy for socializing and evangelizing the research."

Brigette Metzler Dana Chrisfield

Research Repositories: A global project by the ResearchOps Community

August 27, 2020

John Cutler

"If all 50 items are said to be important, you can’t do them all at once; starting randomly is better than stalling."

John Cutler Harry Max

Prioritization for designers and product managers (1st of 3 seminars)

June 13, 2024

Mackenzie Cockram

"Agile can feel like a cult, but the data helps show it’s working and not just a belief system."

Mackenzie Cockram Sara Branco Cunha Ian Franklin

Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Research from Discovery to Live

December 16, 2022

John Cutler

"Executives only like things in threes, but if you do a three by three, you can get away with nine boxes—that's the max executive information processing."

John Cutler

The Alignment Trap

November 29, 2023

Mike Oren

"Democratizing research can lead to duplication and even conflicting results if we’re not careful."

Mike Oren Janice Wiitala

Design Research Strategy & Strategic Design Research

February 3, 2022

Sheryl Cababa

"Today's problems come from yesterday's solutions."

Sheryl Cababa

Living in the Clouds: Adopting a Systems Thinking Mindset

June 6, 2023

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"Each time that goat sees an accessibility issue, he says Billie T get it. Accessibility."

Saara Kamppari-Miller

Theme Three Intro

October 4, 2023