Possible DesignOps Talks
What would you want to hear more about?
Some Background Context
I’ve have started introducing DesignOps to Intel, a huge engineering focused corporation. People are often surprised to hear that we even have UX Designers in the first place, let alone DesignOps. As a UX Designer at Intel, I work on projects that impact the relationship between humans and compute — be it new Human Computer Interaction (HCI), form factor categories, or platform experiences (meaning, new experiences that work on many devices with Intel chips inside). These come into the market through partnerships with other large tech companies. My current team is a mix of UX Researchers, UX Designers, Industrial Designers, and Product Design Engineers. I’m not trying to boil the ocean with DesignOps — I am starting with adopting DesignOps within my team, while reaching out and building community across the other design and research teams at Intel.
Possible DesignOps Talk Topics
Five options, which do you want to hear more about?
1. You Have the Authority to Start DesignOps
Assume responsibility and start doing what you can, with what you have, to make the change you want to see in designing how we design. This talk is about how I became a change agent years ago, and how being a change agent helped me lead my team in adopting DesignOps. The combination of being a change agent and discovering DesignOps has given me the confidence to take an active leadership role, versus a passive interest in designing how we design.
“Do what you can, with what you have, to make the change you want to see.” — Change Agent Motto
2. Build Your Team Skills Wheel
My current team is compromised of two design teams that were merged together late last year. We started with some challenges of understanding each others roles and terms with multiple meanings. I facilitated the team through a process from building an affinity diagram together, to building a custom team skills wheel and doing a skills self-assessment using the skills wheel. At the end of this process we had a common framework to discuss what we do with each other, and identify opportunities to spot coach one another to help each other grow stronger.
3. Bringing Industrial Design into the DesignOps Discussion
Industrial Design (ID) is often missing from the UX and DesignOps discussions online. This has been a challenge because it can alienate Industrial Designers from feeling like they are part of the UX enchilada. I’ve been revamping different UX process models to bring back industrial design as part of the discussion. These discussions have been challenging because they impact not only how we work together, but how funding is discussed with regard to people and project allocation.
Side Note: I was thrilled when my colleague sent me this article from the IDSA (Industrial Designers Society of America): A New Era for Industrial Design. Their third bullet is: “Industrial design is now experience design.” Yes, yes, and yes!
4. Prototype vs Prototype: When Terminology Clashes
This is similar to talk #3, instead framing and focusing on the challenge of bringing different design schools of thought together (ID, UX, IxD) and what happens when terminology clashes and what that means for process and DesignOps. Sometimes it is just terminology, other times it is a deeper clash between philosophies of how we should work.
5. Using PowerPoint for Documenting Experience Requirements
Older big corporations have a harder time adopting the latest modern online based tools. This talk is about how I’ve bent PowerPoint to my will to create a “docu-website” for documenting and sharing experience requirements. It will also discuss the challenges of building a document template for a team, where a template is really a suggestion of design process.
Share in the comments about which topic you would like to hear more about as a DesignOps talk!
Saara Kamppari-Miller
Design Strategy, User Experience Design, Interaction Design
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