What does DesignOps look like at Purplebricks?

Monica Chauhan | DesignOps Manager at Purplebricks

I joined Purplebricks as DesignOps Manager in April 2020 to support the small but mighty team on their mission to deliver digital solutions at scale, through growing and establishing the Design function. In that time, the DesignOps role has organically shapeshifted to meet the requirements of the Purplebricks Design team. So, what exactly are these requirements? And what does Design Operations entail?

Defining DesignOps — what even is it?

This is a question I get asked a lot! Whilst those who work in Design will be familiar with the role, the very nature of DesignOps means it can differ from organisation to organisation, as no single company will require the exact same set-up.

One of the definitions that best encapsulates the breadth of the role comes from Fabrico Teixeira from UXCollective:

‘It’s the department (or single person) that plans, defines and manages the design process within an organisation. Their goal is to ensure the design team becomes a well-oiled machine, functioning at high efficiency, low friction, and generating high quality outputs’

Meredith Black, one of the original pioneers of DesignOps and writer of the DesignOps Handbook (and my DesignOps hero!) simply describes it as:

‘(DesignOps is to) let the designers do the design work while somebody else takes care of the rest, whether it’s the resourcing, whether it’s the recruiting, whether it’s budgets, tools… or getting the project management done’

To help bring that to life, I like to group the work DesignOps does into 3 areas; People, Process and Product.

People — this covers everything from resourcing, recruitment, retention and onboarding to skills mapping, career progression frameworks and team organisation.

Process — this includes design workflow, capacity planning, and even the nuts-and-bolts basics of tooling, hardware and software.

Product — this can be both working with Product teams for roadmap/capacity planning, and managing a product such as a Design System.

Okay, so what does DesignOps look like at Purplebricks?

My first task when joining Purplebricks was to establish what the business needs were, as well as what the team’s needs were. Working with the Design leadership team, we established the immediate priorities to be to the following.

• To review our current working model and define the growth plan to scale design
• To kickstart work on the Purplebricks Design System
• To work on standardising tools, methods and processes

We also wanted to make work as collaborative as possible across a number of fast paced squads, all with the aim of delivering operational efficiency across our design capabilities.

For the purpose of this blog, I’ll be sharing how we reviewed our working model and growth plan. To read about how we have started to standardise our tools, you can check out ‘Why we chose Figma’, where our Senior UI Designer, Simon Harper, explains the method and impact behind finding the perfect design tool.

Scaling design

Back in April 2020, we were a tiny team of 5 consisting of UX, UI, and Copy roles spread across several areas. My first task was to look at how work came into the design team, how many squads there were, and how I could ‘traffic manage’ work coming into design. Incoming work was individually sized and assessed for priority, before being allocated to one of the designers. I used a Resource Management tool to support planning and ensured to include Product Managers and Scrum Masters in capacity planning sessions for alignment.

In most cases, designers stretched across multiple products, splitting their week across squads. Whilst this way of working is not unusual for smaller Design teams, it’s not a model that is sustainable where there is more demand than support available. Designers were having to context switch as they moved between squads, which wasn’t ideal.

The Centralised Partnership Model

I worked with the Design Leadership Team to propose a model of embedding designers into a squad in very much the same way the Engineering teams were operating. The approach was to move away from being seen as an internal ‘agency’ or ‘centralised team’, and instead to firmly collaborate with the squads responsible for improving Purplebricks products. This is often described as a Centralised Partnership model or Matrix UX Team by the Nielson Norman Group. Designers become embedded in squads but still have a ‘homezone’ of Design to come back to share learning.

Whilst this was great news for the squads that gained dedicated design support, it was not so great news for those that needed to go without in the short term. However, surfacing gaps is crucial in growing any team, alongside evidencing value as a rationale for scale, and as a consequence we were able to prioritise recruitment for those areas.

Recruiting in a pandemic

Growing teams against the backdrop of a pandemic was a new challenge for me. How could we attract talent in a world of uncertainty? And once recruited, how could we support a remote onboarding experience that was reflective of the fun, open culture we had at Purplebricks? I started by breaking down what needs to happen before a new starter joins, to what happens on their first day right through to their first 3 months.

We reviewed how we sent out kit and established the right cadence for activities such as check-ins, design shares, stand-ups, events and even remote socials to welcome new members of the team. Feedback from new starters as to what worked for them and what could be better also helped in continuously iterating this process.

Fast-forward 10 months and we’re now a team of 12, continuing to work to the Centralised Partnership model. It didn’t happen overnight, and there were challenges along the way — however, seeing the value design is bringing to the squads and the pride that comes with seeing the team grow, is certainly worth the effort required to achieve it!

What’s next?

It’s an exciting time at Purplebricks as we continue scale our Design team and the various disciplines within it. A focus for me is to establish and grow our Research function so that we can continue to be led by the needs of our customers and agents. This includes reviewing Research tools, user testing platforms and building out the research roadmap. I’ll also be working more closely with our Product teams to explore the role DesignOps can play in strengthening and supporting relationships across our Digital team.