DesignOps is an approach which, when implemented properly, has the power to put design and user experience at the core of the business.

In a practical way, DesignOps is either a dedicated person or a team that takes care of planning, defining, and managing the design process within a company. This is made possible by removing any obstacles and inefficiencies, while enabling designer tools, processes and working relationships to make sure that design works at every stage of design (research, prototyping, revision, usability testing or handoff stage).

DesignOps in Action: what are the benefits?

The goal of DesignOps is to establish a highly efficient design process that generates high-quality design outputs. DesignOps create benefits for stakeholders who are involved in the design process, not necessarily just the designers. Here are some of the benefits:

Design seats at the table: it encourages all teams to think about how design affects and how is affected by the organization. This could include budget, processes, resources and structuring the team in a way that makes most sense for the organization.

Build scalable processes: while teams grow, so does the need for scalable and repeatable processes. Designers usually have their own preferred tools and methods, however, it’s more important to have similar processes that make sense as a whole for the organization.

Build trust: it improves the way design and every teams work together making design more open and focused on results. DesignOps should consider designing a culture within the rest of the organization thinking about the “operations” such as rules, processes and workflows that allow everything to run as planned.

The value of good design: having a DesignOps adds reliable inputs to design systems (components, processes, guidelines and tools) and gives outputs for what happens when it’s done well. If it’s not done well, the larger the company the more it will cost.

Airbnb: an early advocate of DesignOps

Given the gap between Engineering and Design, Airbnb decided to build the DesignOps team. At the time, the original design team grew and it became increasingly difficult to work together without defined processes and structures.

This approach made a lot of sense when Airbnb considered what it takes to scale and run a high-performance design team that needs to maintain pace in a growth company.

In their own words, Airbnb have created DesignOps to ease collaboration and amplify effectiveness, not only across product disciplines, but also between the increasingly complex world of Product Design.

Today, DesignOps at Airbnb consists of five distinct teams. Together, these teams are focused on ensuring a holistic design process, building tools, and ensuring that the values of the design team are carried right through the rest of the business.

The take away

Looking at an organization is often one of the first things to address in how teams can actually take action.

“The leader’s success in this skill is not just in the development of a vision — the corporate world is littered with concept videos, detailed mockups, and other scenarios of possible futures. Their success is instead shown in how the vision catalyzes action, inspiring the people within a company to charge forward because they want to live in a world where that vision is made a reality.”

— in Peter Merholz’s Org design for Design Orgs

Of course it’s not as straightforward as it sounds, but as long as we start to see small changes, we know we are in the right direction.

The need to have a DesignOps is especially important as long as the team grows to prevent of having to retroactively amend process holes; and to carry processes and guidelines to other teams (or members of the team) that might be spread out geographically.

References:

https://www.abstract.com/books/designops-from-discovery-to-successful-scaling