The Future of Design Operations

Today, major design decisions (e.g., product and packaging) are primarily handled by an ever-expanding group of non-designers, often referred to as “business people.” The argument is that they know the business better than those who work in it, so we should defer to their insights.

For most organizations, this has created a world where design is highly regulated and standardized, design teams are kept very small (or nonexistent), and design decisions are made by committee. And for those who work in the creative industry, it has created a world where designers must compete for cheaper rates instead of competing with their ideas. This isn’t to say that there aren’t significant innovations happening at every turn—there’s a growing number of organizations that have embraced the idea that design is a competitive advantage. They’re looking for designers who want to work with them to break through the clutter and deliver great experiences, not just pretty packaging. These are the organizations where design operations can thrive because they’ve created an environment that allows designers to be creative facilitators instead of having design dictated to them.

THE FUTURE OF DESIGN AND HOW TO OPERATE DESIGN

But what about the companies that still struggle with empowering designers and making the most of their creative investments? What about those companies that end up settling for average or disappointing results because they can’t attract or retain great designers? And what about those that don’t understand the value design brings to their business? Even worse, what about those that think design is just about pretty pictures?

The simple truth is that if you’re one of these companies, there are probably many designers who don’t want to work for you. And even if they do accept your offer, odds are they won’t stay long because their creative instincts will tell them it’s not the best environment for them to succeed.

If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. If your organization isn’t already there, design operations can help take your business to the next level. Why? Because design operations are about freeing designers to do what they do best—design great products and experiences for real people. The key ingredients are removing boundaries, shifting mindsets, and providing the tools needed to help designers be creative instead of just compliant.

The future of design operations is now, and it starts with you.

What is Design Operations?

Design Operations is a way of thinking and doing designs that free designers to be creative. It’s an approach to running design teams and projects that recognizes the expertise and skills the teams and individual contributors bring to the table and provides clear direction and guidance to work well together toward common business goals. A design operations manager looks after these things. Design operations implements effective ways of removing mental barriers and physical constraints to facilitate creative efforts. It provides tools and methods for managing design projects smoothly and efficiently without compromising the quality of the work or diminishing the designers’ value to an organization.

Design operations takes a holistic approach to managing design teams and projects, recognizing opportunities throughout the creative process, from naming a project to branding it, to design strategy, prototyping a concept, and collecting user feedback, which helps the design process mature. Like any other discipline, it involves establishing protocols, procedures, and best practices to ensure everyone is on the same page from the beginning.

How does Design Operation Work?

When you design an experience for a user, you have to consider five unique elements:

Purpose – why is this being created? What need are we trying to fulfill?
Audience – who are we designing for? Who are the users who will interact with our product or service?
Value – what value will the experience provide the user? How does it fit into their lives?
Process – what is the workflow for creating this experience? What are the steps involved to create and deliver it to users?
Environment – where will our product or service exist, both physically and within an eco-friendly design system of other products/services?

Designing for the Purpose

When we design for a company’s mission and vision, we can provide guidance on why they exist, and what values drive business decisions. We also shed light on things that may not be immediately obvious but are important to consider—like the history behind a company’s products or their impact on other parts of a client’s eco-friendly design system and users’ lives.

Designing for the Audience

The more we know about our audience, the better equipped we will be to design experiences that speak directly to them and resonate with their existing beliefs, behaviors, and preferences. We can shed light on how people think and feel and what motivates them.

Designing for the Process

In design processes, we get down to the nitty-gritty. We delve into decisions about tone and voice, how users will engage with a product or service, what channels need to be considered, and so on. Understanding our process helps us establish clear guidelines for what a user should expect at each touchpoint.

Designing for the Environment

We think of this step in terms of both physical and mental environments. How does a company’s office space dictate how its employees work? What about their culture and business practices? What other products or services exist within their ecosystem, and how do they operate/interact with each other? How do these elements impact users’ experiences with their products and services?

Designing for All Five Elements at the Same Time

An ideal design process guides all five elements, but this isn’t always possible. We must prioritize which elements are most important for the project at hand. For example, if a client needs help defining strategy, then the Purpose and Audience elements may be the most important. If they want to know how their environment dictates workflow, then the Process element might be the top priority.

How to Structure a DesignOps Teams to Win

It works best for the organizational structure when they consist of a multi-disciplinary group passionate about delivering great user experiences. There are no hard and fast rules on what the team should look like, but there are some questions to consider:

What types of skills, talents, and experience does my team need?
Who on my team should have a seat at the table? What titles/roles/skills should be represented?
How do we organize our teams to tackle projects together and bring our best selves to all of them?
Do I need new team members to get the task done?

No one is an island when it comes to specific skills, talents, and experience. No single person has all the answers, and it takes a village to raise an exceptional user experience. As such, we believe that any Design Operations team member should possess at least some of these basic skills:

Empathy for end-users, which includes understanding their motivations, goals, challenges, and pain points.
Ability to distill complex topics into simple and actionable language (e.g., “Why is this important?” “What value does it bring the user?”).
Ability to work across disciplines, which includes understanding business goals and priorities, technical constraints, and how these impact users’ experiences
Data literacy, which includes knowing what data they can trust (or can be trusted with) and how it can be interpreted
Ability to communicate ideas clearly through both written and verbal communication
A comprehensive understanding of the user experience design process.

All members on a design operations team must have at least some form of influence on, or visibility of, every project they take on. The ability for anyone on a team to have a seat at the table helps break down barriers between disciplines and creates shared ownership of projects across teams. It enables everyone on the team to contribute their expertise.

Design Operation Team Roles

If you have a team member who has the right skills, talents, and experience to do their job well, they can most likely handle more than one role. Having said that, not every person is suited for every role across all projects. Furthermore, some roles will be more critical to certain types of projects than they are to others. As such, the roles that are most commonly found on design operations teams are:

Strategist
Designer
Writer/Editor
Project Manager

Strategists:

Strategists play a critical role in creating design strategies. They help facilitate alignment among team members and outside stakeholders by clarifying goals, priorities, processes, structures, etc. They can empathize with end-users, understand clients’ business goals, and work through complicated topics by doing user research that helps create great experiences.

Designers:

Designers bring ideas to life, whether it’s creating wireframes for a new prototype, defining visual design guidelines, or designing more abstract elements like maps or data visualization tools. They consider the “Why” and the “How,” and bridge those ideas with reality by understanding technical constraints. There are different types of designers that are needed, like visual designers, UX designers, etc.

Writers and Editors

Writers and editors play a critical role in projects by helping the team communicate effectively. Whether writing copy for a landing page or an email, updating style guides and pattern libraries, or editing marketing materials, we need to make sure we get our ideas across clearly and concisely.

Project Managers

Project managers help coordinate all of the moving pieces of a project. They ensure tasks are assigned and completed on time. They’re able to communicate effectively between teams and keep everyone on track. A great project manager knows how to prioritize and organize tasks so that everyone can do their best work.

Design Operation Team Structures

There isn’t a single, correct way to structure a design operations team. The most important thing is that your team works together well and collaboratively. What’s also helpful is to understand the common structures found in other design operations teams. The purpose of this is to give you inspiration on how your team could be structured and to help you identify what skills are needed for your team.

Centralized Design Team
Decentralized Design Team

Centralized Design Team:

Centralized teams are typically organized by discipline (e.g., UX, Visual Design). Although they are organized by discipline, members of these teams tend to work collaboratively on projects. Simply put, this type of team is great for small organizations where projects are more vertically aligned, and there isn’t much overlap between different types of projects.

Decentralized Design Team:

Decentralized teams tend to be organized by project or product line. These teams can have members from across disciplines who work together on a specific project before disbanding, only to reform when a new project begins. The flexibility of this type of structure makes it ideal when the types of projects you work on vary greatly. However, there may be members on different teams who don’t necessarily collaborate. Decentralized teams can be less efficient when leveraging experience and knowledge across multiple teams.

Project Support Works in Parallel with Design Leaders:

While project support handles project management, that is not their only task.They are the communication backbone of the design operation. They support designers, strategists, writers/editors, PMs, and clients on an ongoing basis to ensure projects run smoothly, efficiently, and on time. They work with the design teams to identify roadblocks and bottlenecks to be addressed proactively. They bridge the gap between everyone on the team to ensure that they are collaborating, not just working side by side in silos.

The Design Operation Tools you Need to Execute Great Design at Scale:

Design tools are constantly evolving, but some remain constant. You need to know what tools you will be using on projects to support them on an ongoing basis. Here’s a list of the most commonly used design operations tools:

Sketch
Zeplin
InVision
Principle/Flinto

Sketch:

The sketch is a lightweight and easy-to-use tool that you can get up and running quickly. It’s great for design exploration, rapid prototyping, and wireframing.

Zeplin:

Zeplin provides seamless communication between the design team, developers, and PMs. It allows for quick visual design specs made up of layers, annotations, notes, color swatches, text styles, etc.

InVision:

InVision is best used for prototypes that present individual screens or states in an online environment, allowing users to interact with your designs.

Principle/Flinto:

Principle/Flinto are similar lightweight tools that allow quick prototyping and animation.

Getting Started with the DesignOps Mindset (and Creating Demand):

Now that you know more about what design operations entails, how do you prepare? The first step is getting your organization to buy into the importance of design. It would help if you showed why it is needed and how it will drive value for the business. If you have not created the demand for the role, now is the time to start or continue putting together a business case. Next, you need to build your team. This can take time because design leaders, managers, and other key stakeholders may not yet understand what design operations is or why it is needed. That’s okay! If you have successfully built demand for your role and the need for a design operations team, you can explain that a more effective design process will save time and money in the long run.

DesignOps is also great for designers or other creative professionals who want to learn or build new skills. In these roles, you get exposure to everything from business strategy to project management. You get more practice working on projects and your leadership and management skills get a chance to shine.

Ready to get started? Alphacrew Studio can help you with your DesignOps strategy, processes, and different media kits.

To get in touch with us, contact us at: contactello@alphacrewstudio.com