How DesignOps Can be Useful for Design Teams of All Sizes
The biggest trend in the design industry is probably beyond buzzwords
It is well known that many popular concepts in the design discipline, such as “design thinking”, “human-centred design”, can be considered as repackaging and rebranding of processes and knowledge that practitioners in the field have been using in their work for a long time. Although many people criticize these popular concepts as buzzwords, they do have their unique role in popularizing and establishing the value of design as an indispensable discipline in the tech industry, just as important as engineering and product.
Looking at recent trending discussions in the design industry, it is hard to miss “DesignOps” topics in one place or another. There’s a lot of ambiguities in the industry on what DesignOps actually means. After reading a lot of the materials on the topic and reflecting on my past experience in product and design, I’ve come to the conclusion that DesignOps captures the part of work most designers do in their jobs besides when they are actually “designing”. Or, as Josh Ulm at ORACLE puts it, “operations are basically responsible for all of the overhead that makes design happen.”
“Operations are basically responsible for all of the overhead that makes design happen.”
— Josh Ulm at ORACLE
The popularization of “DesignOps” as a design discipline in a way reflects the progress of design maturity in organisations. It is no longer rare to find companies and VCs that put a big emphasis on the value of design and invest heavily in great product and brand experiences. Given this, how do we — design practitioners in the industry — move the frontier a step further to promote and improve design practices at scale in modern teams? Naturally, after answering the “why” and getting a seat at the table, the next big question is: how do we make design happen?
I became particularly interested and involved in the work that could be described as “DesignOps” after I transitioned into a leadership role from a design individual contributor. As succinctly summarised by Dave Malouf in the “Design Operations Handbook”, when reflecting on the past year or so of my career development, the work that is outside of a traditional sense of “design”, but is necessary to keep the team healthy and effective in the long run, usually falls into three overlapping areas of focus — namely Business Operations, People Operations, and Workflow Operations.
- Business operations: working with legal and compliance requirements; requesting budget and financial resources to support design and research activities; managing design and research tools for effective and efficient teamwork.
- People operations: defining and deciding which roles and skill sets are needed; hiring and retaining the best talents for each role; resolving issues around team collaboration and maintaining a healthy team culture; having effective 1-on-1s to make sure people have what they need to be successful in their job.
- Workflow operations: defining and evolving the design process to support changes in team structure and dynamics; managing workloads and project pipeline; making the right people are involved at the right time in order to move the project forward efficiently.
Is DesignOps only relevant to bigger design teams and tech companies? Not necessary. One of the biggest benefits of having a DesignOps-oriented mindset when working in a fast-growing startup is that it helps reduce silos in the organisations and provide opportunities for the team to drive initiatives that improve the design process and increase impact, instead of simply waiting for change to happen from the top-down.
When design operations issues are not resolved, design teams are often left frustrated and find it difficult to produce good quality work that drives results. In my opinion, one of the biggest benefits of the currently DesignOps trend is that it promotes a new perspective within organisations that the scope of work for design reaches beyond design-as-a-practice itself. We have seen many success stories from established organisations such as Airbnb and ORACLE who have successfully integrated DesignOps into their teams and processes and delivered great results. The same principles could potentially also benefit other startups regardless of their scale and stage of growth in helping improve their design practices and processes and continue to empower designers within these organisations to create delightful experiences for their customers.
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