4 Crucial Crafts of Design Operations
From DesignUp, on DesignOps, with a tinge of Wizardry
Prologue
The first design-centric masterclass that I attended was at DesignUp 2019, last month. Dave Malouf, a pioneer design leader in formulating and practicing DesignOps, conducted the masterclass. He is also an organizer of the DesignOps Summit that happens every year.
His class on Elements of DesignOps was thought-provoking and information-rich that gave us an understanding of what the discipline is about and how it can work in different organizations. This article is a condensed amalgamation of my reflections of the class and the additional reading outside of it. I hope it is worthy of your time!
Arrival
Aren’t we all glad that we’re well over the Industrial Age, where the primary importance was given to productivity and optimization? Knowing that most of our recent ancestors were cogs in the bigger machine doing the same things every day, makes us feel privileged for what we get to do today.
All the industries now, from healthcare to manufacturing, have adopted networked software for its better operations, which means that every organization is investing in Design that happens to be a critical practice in networked software development.
Although, in the initial days of software design, the focus was on technology and feature enablement. The more features we check, the more desirable was the product/service. But now, after feature bloating has frustrated users, we have grown to appreciate the experience that a good product or a service provides. Thus designers of today are striving to deliver exceptional experiences that don’t just solve people’s problems but deeply connect with them like never before. Every day we innovate to better the lives of the people who come in contact with our services (products are also something-as-a-service these days).
Well, Design has finally gotten the seat that it deserved at the table. So, what’s the next step? It is time to establish, organize, and evolve a design team with the help of a function that’s not spoken about much — Design Operations.
Operations! Does that sound boring? Well, not anymore. I promise to make the rest of the article engaging if you stick with it. :)
Crafts of DesignOps
To begin with, let’s define Design Operations (DesignOps).
It is the function that promotes the value and success of design by supporting the activities, processes, and people involved.
Even though most of the organizations have this function in place in some form or the other (in broken parts or whole), it is crucial to realize the holistic picture of DesignOps to truly bring out the best of the teams.
In the Ministry of DesignOps, all that we need are 4 crucial and essential crafts. These can serve as the foundation of DesignOps for any organization.
Creative Craft:
“I want to do it properly,” were the first words of which Harry was fully conscious of speaking. “Not by magic. Have you got a spade?” — Harry Potter
Any design team is ultimately judged by the quality of the output it produces. With Creative Craft, the goal is to empower the designers to create work of high quality that removes subjectivity out of the equation. These are the key artifacts when made right, would help us achieve quality designs.
- Documentation of how a good user experience research is conducted
- A charter of brand design principles and experience guidelines
- An official (frequently updated) design system to deliver consistency and scale across products of the same organization (if they deem fit)
- Directory of good quality design work
- Listing of scenarios when creativity precedes guidelines
- A space to proliferate possibilities over delivery and where rules can be broken (like the Room of Requirement that can appear for mischievous designers in need)
- Humanized, collaborative critique sessions where the peers/managers offer multiple solutions and where results matter over personal preferences
Managerial Craft:
“Yer a wizard, Harry, and a thumpin’ good one I’d wager, once yer trained up a bit, o’ course.”
— Rubeus Hagrid upon meeting Harry for the first time
The first tenet of managerial craft is mentorship. All designers, when trained right by their teachers/mentors, go on to create an unmeasurable impact in their careers, just like the students of Dumbledore’s army. Training is not just about teaching professional tools. It is also about helping the designers with their soft skills, seeing people as people and not resources, understanding complexities, and figuring out solutions through empathy.
The second tenet is the nature of the environment that is fostered. Dave talks about fighting the Agile work environment for designing better. In the Agile type of work environment, even though the development is speedier and iterative, designers become disconnected after a while, solving problems in the same solution space. With a centralized partnership method, designers can collaborate with design peers who can improve their skills, keep their interests alive, and receive guidance from mentors across teams who can help them chart a path.
Operational Craft:
‘So what is Quidditch?’
‘It’s our sport. Wizard sport. It’s like — like soccer in the Muggle world — everyone follows Quidditch — played up in the air on broomsticks and there’s four balls — sorta hard ter explain the rules.’ — Hagrid
The first tenet in operations is coordination. When dealing with two sets of stakeholders in business and design, it is a necessity to address the concerns regarding staffing, financial planning, decision making, and distribution of work. It is also about setting up guidelines for handoffs between teams and processes for escalation and issue resolution when they arise.
“With the Centralized Partnership, business teams, which otherwise have control over much of their own destiny, do not have their own designers. This can make them anxious. Quelling their concerns requires conversations.”
The second tenet is to define expectations. The design teams need to have people skilled in all the relevant domains shown below to address the needs of end-to-end service experience. If clear roles and responsibilities are not assigned to people, things get murky, and the output gets affected. Most of the time, value is expected to be delivered over perfection. Remember Ron getting hit multiple times by his broom when he started out?
“In a connected-software-and-services world, to render an entire journey is a matter of managing overwhelming complexity. There are too many moving parts, too much specialized knowledge necessary to fully appreciate a situation. Designers can no longer rely solely on the hard skills of their practice and craft to succeed. They need to facilitate the creative output of others throughout the organization, tapping into a resource often left dormant.”
The final and crucial tenet in operations is to measure the impact of design work produced. It’s the responsibility of the DesignOps to consistently frame discussions and to have meetings around user feedback and research findings. If we can measure the quality, pace, satisfaction, and engagement of the designs produced, we will be able to better figure out the gaps and improve their value in the future.
“It’s not just a matter of following a specific plan. Instead, continuous monitoring and adjustment to the plan is essential.”
Culture Craft:
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” — Albus Dumbledore
“Too often, culture is interpreted superficially, but it’s no longer enough to offer free lunches, onsite laundry services, or foosball. Considering people spend 90,000 hours at work over the course of their careers, it makes sense for them to seek employment that is fulfilling.”
Culture is the foundation that sits at the base of all the other three crafts. Without culture, there will exist mere processes and systems. Culture is the humanizing entity that changed the work environments of the industrial age. The best design teams share a sense of purpose, as part of its culture, of what they are trying to achieve. The vision of the company, the mission of the team, and the values that the team holds - convey the purpose and reason for the team’s existence. A few organizations create a charter of purpose that looks like this:
Culture is also about how the designers are on-boarded, how they collaborate with each other in meetings and work sessions, the physical environments themselves, how they showcase their work within and outside the organization, how ‘open design sessions’/feedback sessions are held, how much the team is transparent enough and willing to help each another, and finally, how they contribute to the broader design community and spread their influence positively.
Every organization has a culture that is different from another and it need not be the same. That said, there are a set of values that are common among strong design teams.
Epilogue
The 4 crafts mentioned in this article will take time and effort to achieve. These are meant to serve as north stars, for creating successful design operations.
As design teams, we are relatively small when compared to other teams in the organization. But the influence we hold over experiences that directly affect people is beyond what we can ask for. With this great responsibility, also comes great power. I hope we collectively utilize this power in a humane way and reach the goals we dream of!
I will leave you with a canvas that you can use to figure out your current stance in operations and help carve out a path for a successful DesignOps function. Try it out with a colleague, it’s fun!
Credits:
Dave’s presentation deck: Elements of DesignOps
The book that has changed design teams: Org Design for Design Orgs (This post is a super-condensed version of the principles discussed in this book and Dave’s talk. I highly suggest reading the book for gaining in-depth knowledge.)
Images are sourced from MixKit, a sweet colleague, Dave’s deck and Org Design for Design Orgs book.
DesignUp was one of the most fun and engaging conferences for designers of all levels. I’d recommend you attending next year’s if you haven’t attended yet.
And thank you for taking the time to read this article. I hope you found it useful! Let me know in the comments if you have made DesignOps work differently in your organization. Much love ❤
