Video: Designing Systems at Scale

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Designing Systems at Scale

Gold

Wednesday, November 7, 2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018

Summary

To be alive in the twenty-first century is to rely on countless complex systems that profoundly affect our lives, where small mistakes can turn into massive inefficiencies and failures. These failures seem to stem from very different problems, but their underlying causes turn out to be surprisingly similar. This talk will cover about the common threads of these failures, how they can be detected and ultimately prevented using various research disciplines – from market research to anthropology to data science. We need to get good at designing and building for systems to tackle multi-dimensional problems at the intersection of people and technology.

Key Insights

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Judy Ellis’s fourth element—appreciation of play—is critical in designing tools that unlock limitless possibilities beyond the product itself.
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Balancing engineering processes and design invisibility creates successful operations by making processes seamless yet well-documented.
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At Shopify, service lines function as bridges between product lines to facilitate knowledge flow and alignment across domains.
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The brain processes data through two main streams: the 'what' stream (quantitative/object data) and the 'where' stream (qualitative/context data), both essential for good decision-making.
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Contextual, qualitative data (the 'where' stream) reaches decision-making centers in the brain before quantitative data, highlighting its primacy in evaluations.
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Knowledge creation, distribution, application, and evaluation form a circular cycle essential for transforming companies into learning organizations.
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Cross-disciplinary teams combining anthropologists, UX researchers, data scientists, and market researchers improve the richness and relevance of knowledge creation.
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Centralized research hubs combined with decentralized embedded experts provide balanced, accessible, and context-rich knowledge distribution.
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Visible, accessible knowledge assets like Shopify’s merchant frustrations tool enhance organizational learning and responsiveness.
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Strong leadership that understands and promotes knowledge cycles is key to embedding fact-based decision-making throughout an organization.

Notable Quotes

"The toy shouldn’t be the goal of play, but a tool or a process that unlocks the unlimited possibilities set forth before a child."

"Successful operations must have a well-laid-out and transparent process and documentation, but that process must become invisible in its application."

"Service lines bridge the gaps between product lines through information flows to provide the right knowledge at the right time."

"Our brains are terrible at operating only on one type of information, whether object-oriented or context-oriented."

"Context-related data gathered through qualitative research is the first to reach our decision-making centers in the brain."

"Knowledge needs to be thought of as a reusable circular process, not a linear one ending at project completion."

"We want to build teams with diverse skill sets so we can create a full picture during the knowledge creation phase."

"We manage the environment in which knowledge distribution takes place, not the process itself."

"Leadership buy-in is really important—having an executive who understands the value of knowledge creation, distribution, application, and evaluation."

"With proper maintenance, knowledge becomes a vehicle that probes the most hidden spaces of possibility and brings the best decisions to the surface."

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