Design Ops

Challenge

  • Track workload and the progress of a prolific but distributed design team.
  • Provide greater insight and a source of truth to all stakeholders.
  • Too may tools… Slack, Email, Figma, Confluence, Jira, Airtable, Google Docs, etc…
  • Mis-alignment on resourcing and prioritization of projects across different areas of the business.
  • Short on documentation and process for designer career development, performance, and leveling.

Objective

  • Connect the dots across the product org.
  • Improve findability, consistency, and quality of project documentation and assets.
  • Establish a weekly/monthly/quarterly meeting cadence that works for all.
  • Consolidate communication and feedback channels.
  • Empower the team and provide more personal recognition.

Process

  • Adopt Coda for tracking workload and projects.
  • Use Coda to serve up different views to different stakeholders.
  • Hustle hard to roll out a new weekly meeting calendar.

Solution

  • Review, agree and update Coda daily with cross-functional partners.
  • Provide transparency and clarity on prioritization to designers with weekly sprint planning, crits, and design reviews.
  • Lock-in bi-weekly Executive Product Design Review.
  • Create Truth Deck template to improve presentations and storytelling.
  • Create Figma template for projects so all projects feel familiar.
  • Formalize Figma Engineering Handoff.
  • Introduce an official Professional Development Tracker.
  • Contribute to a peer-to-peer recognition program—The Extra Mile.




Published by Karsten Rowe

Karsten is a Product Design Director, with over 15 years of industry history. Based in Seattle. Focused on teams, UI, UX, and design systems.