The Future of DesignOps
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
"Governance participation isn’t optional if you want to avoid reactive impositions down the line."
Lisa WelchmanCleaning Up Our Mess: Digital Governance for Designers
June 14, 2018
"Design systems weren’t built until inconsistent experiences across teams made it undeniable."
JJ KercherA Roadmap for Maturing Design in the Enterprise
June 15, 2018
"You can be most successful at using new note-taking tools if you bring to the practice a different set of mental models."
Jorge ArangoExploding the Notebook: How to Unlock the Power of Linked Notes (2nd of 3 seminars)
April 19, 2024
"Human-centered design can bring curiosity and empathy into traditional analytics work."
Sarah CoyleDesign and Analytics with Sarah Coyle
July 30, 2020
"Crisis is an opportunity, and user research must claim a louder, prouder voice on brand leadership."
Neil BarrieWidening the Aperture: The Case for Taking a Broader Lens to the Dialogue between Products and Culture
March 25, 2024
"Previously Alina spent two days fixing styles in Figma; with plugins, she now does it in 30 minutes."
Farid SabitovAutomatization for Large Enterprise Teams
January 8, 2024
"The future of our technology cannot and should not rest solely on the ethics of individual designers."
Alexandra SchmidtWhy Ethics Can't Save Tech
November 18, 2022
"Improv helps me be high energy and engaged in meetings, which others sometimes notice as 'winging it' fluidly."
Cheryl PlatzMerging Improv with Design
March 7, 2019
"We pick our battles and show what a great party it is without worrying about pulling everyone in."
Maria SkaadenPanel Discussion: Methodologies and Work Environments
November 8, 2018
