Summary
In this talk, Sabria challenges industry norms by emphasizing that tools alone are insufficient without a strong foundation in people. Drawing parallels to agriculture and car manufacturing, she illustrates how scalable systems emerge from coordinated teams, evolving practices, and integrated knowledge bases. She distinguishes design management, which often relies on manual processes, from design operations, which focus on automation, integration, and scalable system design. Sabria outlines five maturity levels—awareness, standardized, integrated, accelerated, and innovated—and cites contributions by Frozen Field Media Designs and Designers Assembly in advancing the discipline. The talk stresses the power of no-code and low-code tools like Airtable, Zapier, and Notion in overcoming complexity and scaling design efforts. Finally, Sabria introduces three related talks by Candace, Keith, and Librarians on no-code scalable systems, scaling learning for design, and next-level knowledge management.
Key Insights
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Tools accelerate design work but people are the fundamental foundation for successful systems.
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Design operations focus on creating scalable systems through automation and integration, not manual processes.
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Design management typically handles manual tasks, while design operations build dynamic, automated workflows.
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Evolving scalable systems requires new roles like Design Program Managers (DPMs) to oversee portfolios.
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No-code and low-code tools are critical for building scalable, complex design systems without heavy technical overhead.
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There are five maturity levels in design operations: awareness, standardized, integrated, accelerated, and innovated.
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Breaking fear of complexity is essential to advancing design operations and scaling systems.
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Design is about solving challenges at scale, which demands standardized, integrated practices across teams.
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Integrated knowledge management is key to scaling design learning and embedding practices into onboarding and playbooks.
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Communities like Designers Assembly and contributions from Frozen Field Media Designs help evolve industry standards in design ops.
Notable Quotes
"Tools are helping us to evolve the way how we work for sure."
"If you invest first in automation and integrations and do not invest enough in people, you might get questionable results."
"Design operations are not just coordinating work, they are creating scalable systems by bringing new practices."
"Excel is great, but it’s not scalable."
"Design managers might manage access manually, but design ops create dynamic permission management and SSO to manage at scale."
"If your goal is to go to the Moon, you must design a spaceship, not a bicycle."
"Design is all about solving challenges at scale."
"Breaking the fear of complexity enables us to move design ops to the next level."
"We are creating an ecosystem of sources to build scalable systems, not just using multiple isolated tools."
"Integrated knowledge bases connect different partners and teams, creating a scalable system of design."
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