This video is featured in the DesignOps amazing talks playlist.
Deanna Washington
Technical Program Manager for Adobe Design
Tim Allen
VP, Design & Research, Instacart
Jeff Courcelle
VP, User Experience & Chief Designer, MicroStrategy
John Maeda
VP of Design and Artificial Intelligence, Microsoft
Matt Raw
VP, Product Design Culture & Operations, The New York Times
Erica Tjader
VP of Design and Research, SurveyMonkey
Summary
What happens next with your career? Engage with a panel of Design VPs as they share their leadership and career advancement journey. They’ll discuss their perception of the DesignOps practice as it's matured over the years and how DesignOps has impacted their role. You’ll learn about the leadership qualities and mindset necessary to unlock your next opportunity.
Key Insights
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Erica Jer entered design ops before the term existed, showing operational skills strengthen design abilities.
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Jeff Corll advises integrating design ops with other ops domains like DevOps and marketing ops to avoid silos and create organizational promoters of UX.
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Matt Raw highlights designers’ power to convene and influence discussions by framing problems and setting agendas.
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Tim Allen states the crucial skill combination is courage to hold conviction and curiosity to remain open to new perspectives.
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John Meda adds audacity as essential, encouraging especially junior designers to boldly experiment and question assumptions in the AI era.
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Evangelism is a key skill, involving crossing departmental boundaries to promote design thinking and UX culture.
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Introverted designers can leverage core design skills as a platform to confidently engage in unfamiliar collaborative settings.
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Being proactive while embracing humility and tolerance for ambiguity leads to better problem solving and creativity.
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To influence investment in design ops, frame the request around solving specific organizational problems, not just the function of design ops itself.
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Design language fragmentation hampers communication; simplifying design language would improve cross-department understanding and impact.
Notable Quotes
"Operational strengths make me a better designer as well — that was called design ops."
"UX belongs to everyone — engineers, marketers, field consultants — everyone is part of that experience."
"Designers have the ability to convene people around an idea and set the agenda."
"Courage and curiosity combined help you lead with kindness and have real impact."
"Junior people are so much smarter than everybody else because they have audacity — they don’t know the rules yet."
"Use your core skills as a platform to partner with others and help build confidence in new spaces."
"You’ll never have enough context — a big skill is to take action despite incomplete information."
"Some of the worst things you can be in UX is immediately decisive — that kills ideation and collaboration."
"Don’t convince the organization to invest in design ops; convince them to invest in solving their problems."
"I would eradicate the many design languages because they make it hard for people to understand what design is."
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