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."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Sponsor sessions are incredibly high quality but completely optional; there’s no sales pitch."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
June 10, 2021
"When the ground shifts beneath us, we get to decide, do we scramble to regain our footing exactly where we stood before? Or do we take a step in a new direction, explore new terrain, and expand the boundaries of what’s possible?"
Megan BlockerTheme 2 Intro
March 12, 2025
"We want participants to feel like they are an extended member of our team, part of a trusted inner circle."
Theresa MarwahHow Atlassian is Operationalizing Respect in Research
February 27, 2020
"Design is the process of moving from an existing condition to a preferred condition—a form of problem solving."
Jose Coronado Julie Gitlin Lawrence LipkinPeople First - Design at JP Morgan
June 10, 2021
"You have to be serious people making this business work, not just doing conferences and performative acts."
Max Gadney Andrea Petrucci Joshua Stehr Hannah WickesAssessing UX jobs for impact in climate
August 14, 2024
"We want to increase trust and engagement among end users by helping non-technical stakeholders participate in model evaluation."
Joel BranchHumanizing AI: Filling the Gaps with Multi-faceted Research
March 11, 2021
"In the enterprise, how quickly and easily your design system can scale is directly proportionate to the amount of impact it can have."
Dawn ResselFull-Stack User Experiences: A Marriage of Design and Technology
June 9, 2016
"Product analytics is much more desired than it is put into use right now among qualitative researchers."
Dave HoraA Research Skills Evolution
March 10, 2021
"In the enterprise, it’s really about make me effective taking into account non-user personas as well as the individual."
Craig VillamorResilient Enterprise Design
June 8, 2017
