Summary
John and the team at Moment have developed—and continue to evolve—a new framework for effective design management: the Design Management Office (DMO). Their goal is to cultivate this new model and share it with our community to better deliver the value of design more consistently and effectively. John will share insights into the challenges design leaders and managers face as they create, grow, and measure the impact of design teams within large, complex organizations.
Key Insights
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Scaling design requires moving beyond product design to address career paths, collaboration, and process intake across organizations.
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Design’s value can be categorized into four areas: interface performance, organizational capability, cross-touchpoint experience, and long-term customer relationship transformation.
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Different types of design projects (new vs. existing, incremental vs. disruptive) demand distinct methods and measurement approaches.
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Leadership needs shift based on the design maturity phase: awareness, influence, capacity building, and impact measurement.
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A Design Management Office or Design Ops team can serve as connective tissue to align resources, processes, and strategies at scale.
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Standardized toolkits and research methods tailored to product lifecycles help teams adopt consistent, scalable practices.
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Knowledge management and learning are crucial both for retaining organizational knowledge and motivating design teams.
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Project framing and pipeline management are frequently underdeveloped but are key to engaging stakeholders and prioritizing strategic work.
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Measuring design impact remains a major challenge due to misaligned KPIs and discomfort quantifying qualitative outcomes.
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Integrating design outputs with development requires collaboration, design systems, and awareness of differing cadences and priorities.
Notable Quotes
"We move here. We never actually become New Yorkers."
"For many years, folks came to us with questions beyond design — about career paths, tools, skills, and intake management."
"The real question is what is it about delivering the value of design at scale."
"You can’t measure long-term customer relationship value with short-term KPIs."
"Incremental improvements and disruptive innovation require very different methods and measures."
"Leadership roles have to evolve depending on whether you’re building awareness, influence, capacity, or measuring impact."
"Knowledge management isn’t just about preserving work, it’s about retaining motivated, growing people."
"A well framed project is a rare thing — it’s also a creative exercise that unleashes teams’ possibilities."
"Most organizations know they need to evaluate impact, but very few have effective ways to do it."
"Design systems help bridge the gap between design and development, but collaboration remains key."
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