The design process is multi-staged, complicated, and involves numerous professionals working on the same project. Therefore, it can be quite challenging to get everyone on the same page and make that process productive. This is when DesignOps comes to the rescue. So, let’s discover how DevOps can enhance the design process, how to build DesignOps culture, and how major companies do that themselves.
What is DesignOps and why it’s so hyped?
If DesignOps is new for you, let us make a little intro. Basically, DesignOps helps to improve the efficiency of the design team and the overall quality of the design output by optimizing process and team. DesignOps was created as a means to operationalize design. DesignOps has a form of a dedicated team that manages the design process within a company.
DesignOps can be a solution to a lot of challenges like growing and evolving design teams, building and maintaining efficient workflows, improving the quality and impact of the design process output.
So, it’s obvious why companies want to implement DesOps into their design process. But it may be still unclear why it’s becoming popular right now. The answer is quite simple – the teams are growing, the whole process becomes more and more complex, and the workload is increasing. Also, we shouldn’t forget modern circumstances when the majority of team members work remotely. This creates an environment where the team’s efficiency and speed are the keys to success and where DesignOps can help to achieve the desired level of productivity.
What do you need for design operations?
To begin with, if you want to implement DevOps to your design process you need to create an appropriate environment for this goal. The first step would be to invest some time in investigating bottlenecks and major productivity-killers. Then, you can move forward and build your DevOps strategy around issues you’ve discovered. The main areas that should be considered are:
- Quality. You need to supply your design team with everything they need to produce high-quality design output. Meaning the right tools, training, and organizational set-up to give the best results.
- Efficiency. The meaning of this word here is to reduce time and maximize efforts for enhanced collaboration. Here you must review your current workflow and find the weak spots and how they can be fixed.
- Design Value. Finally, all design output must have value and be meaningful.
Implementation of DesignOps in the design workflow
Okay, so we figured out the essentials of Design Operations. Now it’s time to learn how to implement them into your design workflow. The trick is to take essential DesignOps values and turn them into your design process strategy. So, let’s take a look at how to achieve DesOps culture in your organization and efficiently use DesignOps tools:
- Be able to collaborate. For efficient workflow, you need to structure well team composition, clearly define roles, and think through organizational structure. Moreover, you need to create an appropriate environment that will foster collaboration. This can be achieved, for example, by creating rituals and meetings for your team. This all creates the perfect workflow for quality design output.
- Manage to get work done on time and efficiently. For enhanced efficiency, you have to create and standardize guiding principles, design processes, and consistent toolsets. Furthermore, you need to harmonize design systems, research hubs, and asset management. Finally, you have to make a balanced workflow your top priority.
- Success in creating the impact. The best way to create design value is to measure design standards, which will define how the work should be done to be considered good. Also, you should spread and socialize your success stories, introduce a rewards and recognition system, and communicate your values clearly.
Learn from others: Spotify and Airbnb
It’s great to know the theory but in order to understand something completely, you should see it in action. For this reason, let’s take a sneak peek at how successful companies manage design operations. In this case, we have chosen Spotify and Airbnb.
Spotify
The DesignOps team at Spotify has a clear vision of the design process and the confidence to build an efficient and to-the-point design strategy. From the beginning, they had a determination to create a well-established design workflow and set the priorities straight to keep focused on the important things. They created a mission statement to inspire the team: “DesignOps aims to turn down the pain and dial up the joy for design.” Their main goal as the DesOps team is to make sense out of complex things and direct the design team to the solution.
Also, they quickly understood that the human part of the design process is as crucial as the technical one. So, it’s essential to check in how everyone feels about the whole process and to keep the team spirit on point. Moreover, they figured out that design works best within the cross-discipline team. But it can be especially challenging in the modern decentralized environment. Meaning that the bond between team members should be especially strong.
Finally, the DesignOps team at Spotify distinguishes three parts of design operations:
- Tools and system
- Learning and inspiration
- Culture and community
Airbnb
The goal of the Airbnb DesignOps team was to unify the design language across platforms. Also, they aimed at empowering designers and engineers to build solutions as parts of a greater picture; and, in parallel, speeding up the design and development process. They also see cross-functionality as a key to the successful design workflow and strive to create a highly integrated and effective design process. Moreover, one of the issues that the design operations design team is trying to solve is how to avoid team members working in silos.
To accomplish all these goals and create an efficient and smooth design process they created 5 distinct teams:
- Design Program Management to take care of our operational strategy
- Design Tools to empower designers, and at the same time build the discipline
- Localization to making sure Airbnb’s language is truly international or truly local
- Production Design to ensure the highest quality of design
- Team Coordinators to keep everyone happy and leadership adequate
DesignOps in your organization
To sum up, design operation is a strategy that can help you create an efficient design workflow that will bring you high-quality design output and make your design team use their maximum potential. Moreover, it can help you to fix the issues with the existing design team and the design process in general. You can create your own DesignOps team, or outsource one. All you need is the willingness to have a highly motivated design team and the aspiration to achieve the best results with your design.