Summary
What’s the most important question regarding today’s theme of innovation that we, as a community, need to address? We’ve asked you, you’ve spoken—and now we’ll tackle it with the aid of Jon and some of today’s speakers.
Key Insights
-
•
Defining team core values is essential for alignment and maintaining design integrity during innovation.
-
•
Focusing innovation efforts on solving one specific problem prevents dilution of energy and resources.
-
•
AI’s impact will be significant but gradual, requiring careful integration and human oversight.
-
•
Organizational tempo and rhythm influence how innovations succeed or fail within a company.
-
•
Empathy must remain central in design ops to understand true human needs beyond metrics.
-
•
Cross-functional collaboration hinges on fostering personal relationships and human connection.
-
•
Security protocols in large organizations limit the pace and type of AI adoption.
-
•
Shared tooling and common taxonomies across teams reduce misunderstandings and boost alignment.
-
•
Performance management is a highly human and operationally complex challenge in design ops.
-
•
Workshops that unify different perspectives on a single problem help build communication and collaboration even if the immediate output isn’t perfect.
Notable Quotes
"Each team should talk about their core values, like integrity, accountability, and respect."
"Innovation means solving one single thing and parking the rest in the lot."
"AI will have outsize impacts in certain areas, but transformation will happen over time."
"The technology can reflect bias and can be more dangerous than early Microsoft Tay without human checks."
"Getting to know the person on a human level helps you succeed even with difficult colleagues."
"If you can’t work together, you’re not going to innovate together."
"Finding the north star problem to align on is key to overcoming different perspectives."
"Large companies won’t let AI break the brand they’ve spent billions on."
"We as designers need to translate pixel-level work into business outcomes and language."
"It’s our job to normalize capacity so people aren’t sprinting to the finish line repeatedly."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"In a landscape focusing on efficiency and profit, we need to help design transition from production to strategic focus."
Angelos ArnisNavigating the Rapid Shifts in Tech's Turbulent Terrain
October 2, 2023
"Prioritizing design ops work is tough amid competing priorities and limited time and budget."
John Calhoun Rachel PosmanBring your DesignOps Story to Life! The Definitive DesignOps Book Jam
October 3, 2023
"Design is often a subsidiary of product, really there to serve engineering—wireframe people."
Alfred KahnA Seat at the Table: Making Your Team a Strategic Partner
November 29, 2023
"The more specific a story gets, the more universal the themes are felt by everybody."
Dan WillisEnterprise Storytelling Sessions
June 3, 2019
"Leading with the customer inside and out, rather than any one discipline, is key for true teamwork."
John Maeda Alison RandAbout Design Organizations (Videoconference)
May 13, 2019
"We had four different supply chains fighting for priority, with different business teams and conflicting systems."
Anat Fintzi Rachel MinnicksDelivering at Scale: Making Traction with Resistant Partners
June 9, 2022
"How do you create a sense of craft in an environment fraught with ambiguity, complexity, and anxiety?"
Uday GajendarThe Wicked Craft of Enterprise UX
May 13, 2015
"This is a super exciting time in the brief history of what we’re calling design operations."
Kristin SkinnerTheme 1 Intro
September 29, 2021
"Closing the learning-doing gap means moving from making content just to publish, to making content that ensures the customer’s job is done."
Maish NichaniSparking a Service Excellence Mindset at a Government Agency
December 9, 2021
