Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
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
-
•
Design operations increasingly involves service design to scale impact across complex organizations.
-
•
Sarah's work at the VA showed design's role in transforming bureaucratic culture from compliance to people-centered care.
-
•
Scaling design impact requires support from both executive leadership and grassroots communities simultaneously.
-
•
Human-centered design must evolve toward life-centered design, considering ecological systems, not just humans.
-
•
Early digital tools, like the 2011 Pop Tech iPad app, integrated service design by connecting pre-event, event, and post-event experiences.
-
•
Large legacy organizations like IBM and the VA share similar challenges around legacy systems and cultural inertia.
-
•
Storytelling with qualitative data is critical to influencing change in government and large organizations.
-
•
Facilitation and convening people to collaborate often requires less structure than expected; just creating space is valuable.
-
•
The Presidential Innovation Fellowship acts as an entrepreneurial bridge between private and public sectors to drive civic design.
-
•
Experienced designers benefit from having a 'playbook' but must continuously adapt to new contexts and players.
Notable Quotes
"Design operations is really so much about service design."
"Hot Studio’s Maria is considered one of the founding members of design operations."
"Why would you do pro bono social impact work without a sustainable business model?"
"We did journey maps to understand how to connect digital and in-person experiences at Pop Tech."
"You need support from the top down, but that’s not enough; grassroots support is equally critical."
"We were changing people’s relationship with change in a rules-based government culture."
"Storytelling through evidence like videos and printed stories is incredibly valuable for making impact."
"There are still very few Chief Design Officer roles in government agencies."
"People often go along with an outcome if they feel like they were part of the process."
"I’m trying out life-centered design because we live in a biosphere, not just a human world."
Dig deeper—ask the Rosenbot:














More Videos

"Celebrating learning—especially when invalidating a hypothesis—is a key cultural value we embrace."
Monty HammontreeThe Future of UX Research (Videoconference)
December 3, 2020

"Knowing your positionality as a researcher is critical because refugees often fear losing their status and have precarious rights."
Liz EbengoThe Burden on Children: The Cost of Insufficient Post-Conflict Services and Pathways Forward
December 4, 2024

"Leave your new feature in the context of how people will see it so it’s easy for stakeholders to understand."
Billy CarlsonTips to Utilize Wireframes to Tell an Effective Product Story
June 6, 2023

"The better question is who are we excluding when we talk about inclusive design."
Saara Kamppari-MillerInclusive Design is DesignOps
September 29, 2021

"Knowing your customer and your product inside and out is a given—you can’t design well without that knowledge."
Ian SwinsonDesigning and Driving UX Careers
June 8, 2016

"Equal pay for equal results — content designers and product designers at Intercom have the same compensation bands and equity."
Jonathon ColmanHow to Maximize the Impact of Content Design
January 8, 2024

"When you do a release, you’re really saying, here’s what I’m thinking: how does this work in your world?"
Maria SkaadenContinuous Design: One eye on the horizon and the other on the next wave
November 8, 2018

"Markdown is a very concise and useful format, and it's used all over the place on GitHub."
Bryce Benton[Demo] AI-powered UX enhancement: Aligning GitHub documentation with USWDS at Austin Public Library
June 4, 2024

"The satisfaction score is going down even though average salary is going up — that’s something interesting we should dig into."
Marc FonteijnFirst Insights from the 2025 Service Design Salary(+) Report
December 4, 2024