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
"Unmanaged challenges reduce the quality of life in society."
Onur Kocan Ayhan EnsiciUnderstanding the Strategy for Civic Design in a Complex City: Istanbul
November 16, 2022
"Ideally it should say about collapsed and then you press enter and it says expanded, so you know more options are available."
Samuel Proulx Laur BaekInclusive Research: Debunking Myths and Getting Started
March 12, 2025
"Who is missing from our efforts to make our paths more frictionless?"
Dave MaloufTheme 3: Introduction and Provocation
January 8, 2024
"Most people would prefer to be foraging than work on a farm, but farmers kept taking all the land."
Dave GrayConnection, Community, and the Future of Work
May 28, 2026
"Good designers understand you can’t design what you don’t understand."
Prayag NarulaHow to Empower Your Designers to Do Good Research – And Why You Want To
June 10, 2022
"Running AI categorization on 2000 posts took 38 hours, $19, and as much carbon as driving a 1998 Chevy Malibu from Philly to Brooklyn."
Karen McGrane Jeff EatonAI for Information Architects: Are the robots coming for our jobs?
November 21, 2024
"If executives are responsible for the why and managers are responsible for the what, then directors are responsible for the how."
Peter MerholzThe Trials and Tribulations of Directors of UX
July 13, 2023
"Playbacks are safe spaces where an intern can challenge a senior VP without hierarchy getting in the way."
Adam CutlerPeople + Places + Practices = Outcomes
June 8, 2016
"AI learns from the world, sometimes from untrusted sources, so it needs continual ethical iteration."
Jay BustamanteNavigating the Ethical Frontier: DesignOps Strategies for Responsible AI Innovation
October 2, 2023
