Rosenverse

Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.

Log in Create free account

100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.

Scaling Impact with Service Design

Thursday, March 25, 2021 • DesignOps Community
Share the love for this talk
Scaling Impact with Service Design
Speakers: Alison Rand and Sarah Brooks
Link:

Summary

This will be an informal conversation between Alison Rand and Sarah Brooks. We discuss Sarah's experience applying service design and design research in both the public and private sector to create organizational change that delivers positive outcomes to people. We touch on questions of working at different scales, within different types of organizational structures and business models.

Key Insights

  • Service design and design operations are deeply connected when scaling design impact across teams and organizations.

  • Sarah Brooks’ career spans startups, nonprofit social impact, government innovation, and large enterprise, showing diverse contexts for design leadership.

  • The Presidential Innovation Fellowship program uniquely integrates private sector innovation into federal agencies via entrepreneurial residencies.

  • Ethnographic research at the VA revealed complex barriers veterans face navigating vast healthcare and benefits systems.

  • Large organizations require both top-down support and grassroots momentum to effect meaningful cultural and systemic change.

  • Changing a deeply rules-based government culture involves fostering common-sense empathy and trust among civil servants.

  • Storytelling with human-centered design evidence can influence leadership more effectively than abstract data alone.

  • Human-centered design is evolving toward life-centered design, recognizing interdependence beyond just humans within ecosystems.

  • Convening people across silos benefits from respect, deep listening, psychological safety, and structured yet informal facilitation.

  • The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed work vulnerabilities and accelerated empathy and vulnerability in professional environments.

Notable Quotes

"Design operations is really about how we’re scaling the work, thinking our practices, and serving cross-functional teams."

"At the VA we explored how veterans understood or didn’t understand the services they were eligible for and uncovered many blockers."

"You need support from the top down and from grassroots; those two have to meet in the middle to make change happen."

"Changing people’s relationship with change is key, especially where rules-based culture can stifle innovation and risk-taking."

"There’s no other theory of change I’ve seen more true in large organizations than requiring dual-level support."

"We live in a biosphere that’s collapsing, so maybe we should try life-centered design rather than just human-centered design."

"People often go along with the outcome if they feel they were part of the process."

"If people just got in the room and I did nothing except take a seat, everything would be fine."

"COVID forced all of us into vulnerability, letting us see each other as humans beyond our work roles."

"Qualitative data is data. It’s okay to be informal and human when designing complex systems."

Ask the Rosenbot
Dave Hora
A Research Skills Evolution
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Kaaren Hanson
Stop Talking, Start Doing
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Emily Williams
When UX Research and Institutional Racism Collide: A Case Study
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Kim Fellman Cohen
Measuring the Designer Experience
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Chloe Amos-Edkins
A Cultural Approach: Research in the Context of Glocalisation
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Taylor Jennings
Research Debate Club
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold
Panel Discussion: Communicating the Value of DesignOps
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Erika Flowers
Introduction to MURAL for UX
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Peter Van Dijck
Hands-on AI #1: Let’s write your first AI eval
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Eduardo Ortiz
Day 3 Theme Panel
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Savina Hawkins
Harnessing AI in UXR: Practical Strategies for Positive Impact
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Dan Hill
Strategic design, slowdown, and the infrastructures of everyday life
2022 • Enterprise Community
Jon Fukuda
Theme One Intro
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Frances Yllana
D.E.A.R.R. Diaries (Discipline, Experience, Architecture, Reflection + Revolution)
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Karen McGrane
AI for Information Architects: Are the robots coming for our jobs?
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Russ Unger
Onboarding: The Ecosystem, not the Afterthought
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold

More Videos

John Cutler

"You have to go from being able to deliver a message in three bullets and then turn around in the next moment and deliver a massive service blueprint or customer journey."

John Cutler

Oxbows, Rivers, and Estuaries: How to navigate the currents of change (without burning out)

December 3, 2024

Darian Davis

"Creating a roadmap built enough space to make meaningful design changes for developers to implement."

Darian Davis

Lessons from a Toxic Work Relationship

January 8, 2024

Dave Gray

"Tools are a blessing and a curse; they’re not people and they can’t replace the relationships you need to get the work right."

Dave Gray

Group Activity: Making Sense of DesignOps

November 7, 2017

John Cutler

"I never thought I'd say this, but can someone please for love of God, just make a RACI so we can align on who's responsible for things."

John Cutler

The Alignment Trap

November 29, 2023

Abby Covert

"Diagrams allow us to emotionally hit pause and come back ready to dig further."

Abby Covert

Stuck? Diagrams Help

October 27, 2022

Mark Interrante

"Up to 90% of time in work streams is delay or waiting time, not active work."

Mark Interrante

Collaboration Flows in Product Development

June 9, 2017

Devon Powers

"We can’t just think technology or innovation will solve our problems; we have to embrace and work with those problems."

Devon Powers

Imagining Better Futures

March 9, 2022

Prayag Narula

"Share your learning quickly and often—don’t wait for big reports. Your deliverable as a designer doing research is the design itself."

Prayag Narula

How to Empower Your Designers to Do Good Research – And Why You Want To

June 10, 2022

Peter Van Dijck

"If you build for the next model, even if it can hardly do something now, it will probably do it well in the future."

Peter Van Dijck

Hands on AI #3: Claude Code for UX people

October 22, 2025