DesignOps Summit 2023 >

An outstanding online event of three days including talks and workshops lead by international experts and thought leaders.

So this was my first participation at the Rosenfeld DesignOPS Summit. My interest came from a need to define DesignOPS at Lynk, one of the companies I worked with. Since the first approach at Lynk I was curious about DesignOPS best practices and since this event offered talks of world leading experts I was brave enough to invest the money into my ticket. So let me share And what I found?

First of all the event was structured by three topics.
Theme 1: DesignOPS in context of change and global trends (the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, layoffs, and the use of AI)

Theme 2: Approaches and techniques from design systems and documentation to AI tools and DE&I practices

Theme 3: The human side of DesignOps, from nurturing careers and lifting up teams, to improving collaboration and growing a more inclusive DesignOps profession.

Let’s dig into each of themes.

Theme 1: DesignOPS in context of change and global trends

Of Course I will not summarize each of the 6 talks of the first day but let me share some notes about the talk I found most outstanding: Keeping Design Weird by Lori Muszynski (Executive Director, Design Evolution - People, JPMorgan Chase) and Peter Merholz (Chief Humanist, Humanism at Scale).

Keeping Design Weird

Let me start with the attracting title. When we talk about literally design operations automated and AI generated processes are probably the first topics coming up (and they actually came up as I will explain later) and human based processes and especially being weird caught my attention. And in the field of design Peter Merholz is without a doubt one of the most representative thought leaders.

Lori and Peter shared their ideas based on Why Design should be kept weird is based on following ideas:

Before even thinking about automatizing design processes and thinking about the right tools to use we need to put the designers in the center of DesihnOPS. Designers don’t have a single profile, they do not only do one thing. Often times designers have “weird” professional interests or “weird”  mixtures of design interests. They way designers work and think is not necessarily lineal. Designers are ambitious people and this often the reason why they are unique and so “creative”. Designers create and design mostly based on emotions. These emotions can not be replaced by processes and tools. They can be empowered.

I highly agree that the technical part of DesignOPS is quite easy to fulfill.There are so many books, courses and tools but the human part -which is the essential- is still challenging and there is no “one-size-fits-all” rule that can be applied to all companies.

Theme 2: Approaches and techniques from design systems and documentation to AI tools and DE&I practices

The second day offered two out of nine talks which were quite remarkable to me. These will be the ones I comment on in the following texts: AI as a Design Partner: How to Get the Most Out of AI Tools to Scale Your Process by Kelly Dern (Senior Product Designer, Google) and Documentation Your Team Will Actually Use by Gabrielle Verderber (Manager, UX Operations, AppFolio)

How to Get the Most Out of AI Tools to Scale Your Process

Kelly was talking about how Generative AI (Gen AI) systems generate new content that is both coherent and meaningful. She shared her knowledge about how using Gen AI for the systematizing product design.Documenting user flows - such as critical user journeys (CUJs). Or even during an ideation process by using collaborative product design methods (Design Sprints or workshops). And finally for Synthesis, organization and prioritization. Since I am big fan and User Research practitioner I was very interested in Kelly’s user research experiences using Bart. What I took with me from her talk:

Gen AI is a huge help when it comes to being inclusive when it comes to design. Since AI can very easily summarize all possible/ known user profiles for specific use cases designers and user researchers can take benefit of this automation to make sure even the rarest edge-case users will be taken into account. She gave excellent examples of prompt writing to get the most out of the result sets. The most mind shaking for me was a comment from her about Gen AI still is unreliable and if this is the case from someone who is without a doubt an expert I wonder if I would run the risk of using AI and not being reliable especially knowing that front framing is still quite some effort. I do think that in the future Gen AI can be of great support but I would not rely a 100% if it still includes an uncountable risk.

Documentation Your Team Will Actually Use

Gabrielle gave an intro to her talk framing out what kind of documentation is useful for which case/ person. Documentation as a detail of Process and Policies ( for People Managers or Design Ops) explaining how work is done at the organization using Playbooks, Manuals, Project Templates etc. . On the other hand we have the documentation as record of Projects by Individual Contributors explaining why design decisions were made, detail research findings using Research Readout Deck, Project Documentation. Her talk focused on processes and policies. The reason why I was so interested in her talk was my experience on the difficulty to define the level of documentation since it is a very fine line between over documenting and not sharing Andy knowledge with an organization. I never worked with playbooks I was curious about her knowledge. What I took with me from her talk:

Playbooks are great tools to make sure that processes are coherent. Not only for people who already know the use of tools and methods within a company but also for new hires as part of the onboarding. The more precise the more useful. But with this being said it almost needs a specific role to ensure creation and gatekeeping of the playbooks since the precision has its price which effort and time. For a consulting work it almost indispensable to use playbooks since these will ensure indecency of the client once the consulting company is pulling out.

The human side of DesignOps, from nurturing careers and lifting up teams, to improving collaboration and growing a more inclusive DesignOps profession.

The third day actually dealt with the topic which was my original motivation to participate at the congress: the human part especially about DesignOPS career paths. I was looking forward to hear about Today’s Design Ops and Programs Landscape & Career Paths by Abbey Smalley (Former Head of Design Programs, Amazon).

During her talk Abbey was focusing on today’s DesignOPS landscape specifically on current role landscape, career pathing framework and portfolio tips to stand out. She was more talking to job seekers then leads defining the roles. What I took away from her talk:

Design Ops role titles today do NOT equal the same scope, level or tasks between companies. This might be frustrating for job seekers since there is no way for orientation other then actually talking to companies. On the other hand it obliges design leaders to be as clear and precise in the job descriptions as possible to avoid the seeker’s confusion. When it comes to the applicant’s past experiences applying for a DesignOPS role project management experiences are more important as prior experiences as DesignOPS, Designer, product lifecycle experiences or communication experiences. They all mater but management and design experience are most important.When it comes to the DesignOPS team it is obviously most important to have a good mix of skilled people. Design systems and research are the two most important skills. Another interesting point was that entry level DesignOPS roles are almost not offered -at least in the US. The most desired talents have already 5 to 10 years of experience in DesignOPS. There relatively little open roles when it comes to DesignOPS and the reason why is leaner economic times expecting from designers to “shape” the work of DesignOPS by themselves.

Finally does DesignOPS matter?

I do think that DesignOPS is very helpful and even necessary in an environment in which “design-production” has to be most efficient. Probably in bigger organizations. Does the small startup need DesignOPS? I do not think so BUT in case of creating a DesignOPS team at the very beginning the startup will have great benefit once production will get hectic and especially when design needs to be synced with other areas as development and product. Was the 995 USD DesignOPS summit 2023 ticket worth it? Yes, it surely was. Rosenfeld events are extremely valuable once you know all the theory by reading the books or articles and you want to get an idea on the practical side of things. With this being said I learned things that you will not find easily in a book or online course. Maybe in some Medium articles but you will have to search a lot.