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
"Partnership is everything; to operationalize respect, legal, privacy, procurement, and research must collaborate."
Theresa MarwahHow Atlassian is Operationalizing Respect in Research
February 27, 2020
"Every few years consultants come in and tidy up our mess, but as soon as they leave, we mess it all up again."
Peter MorvilleThe Architecture of Understanding
May 13, 2015
"I see this opportunity to imbue these rigid, bureaucratic corporate contexts with humanism to put people at the center of the work."
Lori Muszynski Peter MerholzKeeping Design Weird
October 2, 2023
"We’re humans having human experiences and remembering that is key."
Jacqui Frey Dan WillisPanel Discussion: Integrating DesignOps
November 7, 2018
"It’s not just empathy, but allowing people to understand all feelings are valid while offering new behaviors that reflect their values."
Hana NagelTurning Research Ripples into Waves
November 8, 2018
"We’re entering an information era because information itself is infrastructure and has actual monetary value."
Bram WesselEnterprise Information Architecture
January 10, 2020
"Acquisition integration shouldn’t start with migration analysis but with engaging brand teams first."
Nathan CurtisDesign Systems for Us: How Many One-Source(s)-of-Truth Are Enough?
January 17, 2019
"The code starts to follow the outcomes and might even start to write itself at some level."
Greg PetroffSoftware as Material—A Redux
June 6, 2023
"Businesses are stripping down to skeleton crews and canceling anything that doesn't directly drive revenue."
Jon FukudaTheme One Intro
October 2, 2023