Summary
Join conference curator Christian Crumlish, conference speakers, and special guest commentators for a lively panel discussion reviewing highlights, sharing notable takeaways, and diving deeper into questions inspired by the morning’s presentations.
Key Insights
-
•
Design and product roles influence strategy differently based on their expertise and stage of company growth, as Joanna illustrates from startup experience.
-
•
Shared ownership of goals across design, product, and business teams facilitates more coherent and effective strategies, as Kat emphasizes.
-
•
Focusing solely on quantitative data and clicks risks overlooking user needs; integrating qualitative user insights is vital.
-
•
Human-centered metrics help bridge UX goals and business KPIs, making success measurable yet grounded in user experience.
-
•
Facilitation skills can be a 'superpower' in aligning cross-functional teams without creating adversarial dynamics.
-
•
Translating complex strategic goals into language relevant for different teams helps increase buy-in and collective ownership.
-
•
Goal-setting and measurement are ongoing challenges that require developing a disciplined feedback loop to avoid wasted effort.
-
•
Product managers often face the challenge of motivating operational teams whose impact on top-level goals may seem indirect.
-
•
Framing goals in terms of promoting desired behaviors and identifying potential negative consequences improves goal quality.
-
•
Survey data and traditional user feedback methods can be insufficient or misleading in contexts with low user volume or engagement.
Notable Quotes
"When the company matured, I wasn’t enough of a domain expert or technical person, so I handed product leadership to someone else."
"We only have agency over what we can execute on, so influencing strategy is limited by our expertise and role."
"Design strategy should deliver a win for the product strategy, which should deliver a win for the business strategy."
"If everyone has the same goal, it becomes easier to share ownership and align strategies rather than creating silos."
"I realized my superpower was facilitating conversations cross-functionally to lead to better outcomes."
"Looking only at clicks and data is seductive but risks sacrificing the user perspective."
"Human-centered metrics show we can still measure success while keeping goals focused on people."
"Translating ambitious goals into everyone’s language—design, tech, business—increases participation and pride."
"Framing goals around behaviors helps create better, more meaningful objectives that anticipate how things could go wrong."
"It’s so easy to focus on shipping things fast and lose sight of whether we’re really delivering value long term."
Dig deeper—ask the Rosenbot:
More Videos
"We see the conferences as polished snapshots of conversation that are happening in a community."
DesignOps Community Sensing Session (Videoconference)
May 13, 2021
"I focus on users’ assistive technology and strategies rather than asking directly about their disability."
Rebecca ToppsPlanning and conducting remote usability studies for accessibility (Videoconference)
September 10, 2020
"Designing for people means acknowledging where we might be exclusionary and embedding equity like accessibility."
Raven VealDark Metrics: Illuminating the Negative Impact of Digital Health Design
March 12, 2021
"This talk is more than anything else about confidence: confidence to lead, confidence to predict, confidence to have a seat at the table."
Sam LadnerHow Research Can Drive Strategic Foresight
March 9, 2022
"If you only have five people with disability to tap on, it might be harder to get them at the scale needed."
Kate KalcevichIntegrating Accessibility in DesignOps
September 23, 2024
"The designers were not doing design work, they were doing non-design tasks that took up to 2.5 days per project."
Patrizia BertiniDesignOps + KPIs = Measure your Impact!
January 8, 2024
"Our code of conduct is on every page of our website and it includes procedures for getting assistance if you feel uncomfortable or bullied."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
October 4, 2023
"I like to think of myself as a DJ at a party, amplifying the power of design to get people on board."
Lona MooreScaling Design Beyond Designers
June 11, 2021
"What if the atomic unit of research wasn’t the report, but the insight within those reports?"
Matt DuignanAtomizing Research: Trend or Trap
March 30, 2020
