Summary
Digital products and services are experiencing another challenging inflection point, with cautious and shrinking product organisations offset by the as-yet undefined promise and potential of AI augmentation. Design practitioners are right to be nervous, as components of our core craft become increasingly commodified by automated solutions. At the same time, the current AI goldrush risks driving us towards a series of potential negative outcomes: a flooded marketplace, customer fatigue, and potentially serious long-term harms. In a concise and rousing talk, I hope to highlight how designers are already well placed to shape the future of digital experiences, and can be empowered further by a handful of intentional shifts in where we apply our ‘pressure points of design’ within our teams, organisations and client relationships. Far from being sidelined, I believe by challenging some of our assumed ways of working and changing the conversation, design practice can emerge stronger and more crucial than ever.
Key Insights
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Design operations must evolve from a focus on outputs and roles to strategic leadership and governance.
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Service design techniques can be used stealthily to align dispersed product teams around a unified customer journey.
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Closing the vision gap between leadership and product teams prevents fragmentation and counterproductive behaviors.
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Embedding values like ethics, inclusivity, and sustainability into design ops strengthens design’s strategic impact.
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Designers excel as neutral facilitators who can orchestrate complex conversations across stakeholders.
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Design teams should proactively move ‘left’ to influence strategy and key stakeholder decisions early.
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Virtual experiment teams crossing organizational boundaries prove the value of design operations quickly.
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Overlapping roles between design leadership and design ops should be pragmatically managed, not over-engineered.
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Operational enablers such as service blueprints create transparency and democratize strategic vision.
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Achieving a seat at the table is not the end goal; design should stabilize and drive thriving teams amid uncertainty.
Notable Quotes
"We are perfectly optimized for where we’re at, but where do we want to go?"
"If I do something here, it’s going to actually make a difference to the client."
"Designers should be the voice that stabilizes that wonky table helping our teams, our clients, our organizations to survive and thrive."
"The points I was covering are around moving to more of a service thinking approach and looking for those extra pressure points."
"Any opportunity is a good opportunity to put designers or design representatives in the room with the right people."
"Creating the conversations in an organization through service design or other methodologies is key."
"Design operations alone might be a tough sell where design is undervalued; we need to show, not just tell."
"Running a shaping session focused on the definition of success is always the most revealing discussion."
"Introducing progressive, user-centric design decisions via design systems can drive organizational change."
"The stronger teams start defining their own shadow strategies, while less successful teams retreat into product panic rooms."
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