Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Breathing Room for Delight

Gold
Monday, January 8, 2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Share the love for this talk
Breathing Room for Delight
Speakers: Sharbani Dhar
Link:

Summary

Over the past few years, the digital team at AusPost has matured into one of the most well-functioning agile trains in Australia. The challenge in this journey to success was to ensure how design and discovery retain their customer centricity in an environment of rapid production. The need was to continue to be proactive instead of reactive in the approach to problem-solving. Some of the challenges were: To ensure there was enough room for the right amount of research for the right problem while ensuring rapid delivery. To ensure that all members of the team from Product to Development could collaborate like a true cross-functional team to come up with solutions to problems. To ensure the team established the right metrics that spoke to the experience. The talk will be a case study of how the Design team experimented with various methodologies to create more breathing room for design-led problem-solving in the agile train.

Key Insights

  • Early visions must balance ambition with technical feasibility to avoid unrealistic stakeholder expectations.

  • Collaborating early with engineering ensures technical constraints shape feasible designs.

  • Quick agile iterations without sufficient customer research can lead to reactive, tech-heavy solutions.

  • Cross-channel initiatives require dedicated time and space for proactive problem solving.

  • Design sprints are valuable for small focused problems but inadequate for complex, multi-dependency challenges.

  • Investing heavily in trendy methodologies without problem clarity can waste resources and stakeholder trust.

  • Separating discovery and delivery into parallel tracks creates breathing room for thoughtful design and faster delivery.

  • Connecting roles across discovery and delivery is crucial to maintain dialogue and alignment in an enterprise context.

  • Establishing a continuous culture of measuring and learning enables ongoing optimization post-delivery.

  • Flexible frameworks and push-pull partnerships allow large enterprises to tailor agile and design practices effectively.

Notable Quotes

"There’s no breathing room for design to conceive and execute a delightful solution in an enterprise."

"SAFE is essentially a software development methodology, and fitting experience design into it has been a constant trial and error."

"While we built amazing visions, it would take around three years to build the technical capabilities and integrations needed."

"Quick agile experiments made experiences technically feasible but led to tech-heavy solutions with little customer focus."

"Design sprints were good but not appropriate for our team’s maturity or complex multi-channel problems."

"Finding the right method for the problem is important; don’t drink the Kool-Aid just because the preacher says to."

"Discovery and delivery run parallel without a time dependency on each other, giving breathing room to think and act."

"Design can no longer sit in a corner and complain about not having a seat at the table; partnerships enable progress."

"A brick and mortar enterprise with multiple operations will not always have a prescribed process; you need to carve what works for you."

"It’s never over; it’s a continuous process of improvement."

Ask the Rosenbot
Brianna Sylver
Lead With Purpose
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Francesca Barrientos, PhD
You Need Your Own Definition of Design Maturity
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Barb Spanton
Doing Work That Matters: A Look Beyond The Idealistic Notion of 'Doing Meaningful Work'
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Saara Kamppari-Miller
"Prototype" vs "Prototype"--Breaking Down and Rebuilding Our Understanding of What We Do
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Sean McKay
Coexisting with non-researchers: Practical strategies for a democratized research future
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Jason Mesut
Unmasking Design Leadership: Navigating leadership without neglecting ourselves
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Luke Roberts
Panel Discussion
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
JD Buckley
COMMUNICATE: Discussion
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Opening Remarks
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Mike Oren
Why Pharmaceutical's Research Model Should Replace Design Thinking
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
JP Allen
Navigating the UX Tools Landscape
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Bria Alexander
Welcome
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Ruzanna Rozman
Getting in Flow with Your Team
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Harry Brignull
Beyond Clicks and Tricks: Why deceptive design has grown into a regulatory faultline
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Catt Small
What's Next for ICs: Exploring Staff and Principal Designer Roles
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Jesse Zolna
Inviting the Whole Org to Come See For Yourself
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold

More Videos

Taylor Jennings

"Seeing product managers and designers’ aha moments when they realize how impactful the tool is was great."

Taylor Jennings Joe Nelson Alex Knoll

Repository Retrospective: Learnings from Introducing a Central Place for UX Research

March 9, 2022

Nicole Aleong

"There are over 7 billion futures of right now."

Nicole Aleong

Future Orientations to Everyday Life: Futures Anthropology as a Methodology

March 26, 2024

Jeff Gothelf

"The team that comes up with the winning idea leaves the studio with equity and carries the idea forward."

Jeff Gothelf

Innovation Studios: the Engines of Enterprise Experimentation

May 14, 2015

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"Leadership needs to be just as behind accessibility as the designers and professionals doing the work."

Saara Kamppari-Miller

DesignOps for Inclusive Design and Accessibility

May 26, 2022

Tess Dixon

"Design ops folks meet the habit of catering so much to everybody’s increasingly trivial whims that it takes us away from the real meaty ops work."

Tess Dixon

C'mon Get Happy

September 29, 2021

Liam Thurston

"Soft skills often are a multiplier on your hard skills—they’re just as valuable, if not more so."

Liam Thurston

Why Your Design Team Is Quitting, And How To Fix It

June 10, 2022

Ian Swinson

"Careers as ladders are what HR wants, but careers aren’t linear; they should be a jungle gym."

Ian Swinson

Designing and Driving UX Careers

June 8, 2016

Leisa Reichelt

"At Atlassian, many confident non-researchers were already doing lots of research, which was an opportunity and a challenge."

Leisa Reichelt

Opening Keynote: Operating in Context

November 7, 2018

Rachael Greene

"Slowing down is hard in a capitalist economy that values speed, but patience and self-care are necessary."

Rachael Greene Alison Davis

Building a Design Ops Practice that Really Works (Most of the Time)

October 2, 2025