DesignOps Summit 2021 Resource List
These resources come from multiple sources: some were cited by DesignOps Summit 2021 speakers during their presentations, and others were mentioned by the conference’s attendees during each presentation. We hope this list will give you a strong sense of who and what influenced the state of Design Operations in 2021.
Wednesday, September 29
C’mon Get Happy (Tess Dixon): readings and other resources
Resources mentioned in the presentation
- Skinner, Kristen and Kamdyn Moore. “8 Types of Measures in Design Operations.” Rosenfeld Media, Apr. 2020
- Rosenfeld Media. “Videoconference: ‘8 Types of Measures in Design Operations’ with Kristin Skinner and Kamdyn Moore.” Rosenfeld Media, Apr. 2020
- Casali, Erin ‘Foletto’. “Team Health Checks: the Person / Team / Product model.” Intense Minimalism, 19 Apr. 2021
- Burnett, Bill. “The Myths of Happiness with Bill Burnett.” Re:Considering, season 1, episode 1, 10 Sept. 2021,
- Brown, Brené. The Power of Vulnerability. Youtube, TED, 3 Jan. 2011
Additional resources (mentioned by the conference audience)
- “Name Drop,” The New Yorker
- Lencioni, Patrick M. “The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business,” Jossey-Bass, 2012.
- Grose, Jessica. “Goodbye to the ‘Office Mom’.” The New York Times, 3 Sep. 2021,
- “World’s Largest Trivia Quiz Website.” Sporcle
- Pink, Daniel H. “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” Riverhead Books, Dec. 2009.
Advice for DesignOps Employee #1 (Amy Zuccaro): readings and other resources
Resources mentioned in the presentation
- Qualtrics Employees XM. “The Ultimate Guide to Employee Pulse Surveys.” Qualtrics Experience Management, 27 Sep. 2021
Additional resources (mentioned by the conference audience)
- Rand, Alison. “Mapping the Designer Journey.” Joint Frontiers, 16 Feb. 2021.
The DesignOps Starter Kit (Michelle Chin): readings and other resources
Resources mentioned in the presentation
- Chin, Michelle. “The DesignOps Starter Kit – 10 Essentials for Starting a DesignOps Practice,” 28 Sep. 2021.
- Welchman, Lisa. Managing Chaos: Digital Governance by Design, Rosenfeld Media, 2015.
- Hoffman, Kevin. Meeting Design: For Managers, Makers and Everyone, Rosenfeld Media, 2018.
- Invision. “Guide To: Benchmarking Your Design System.”
Additional resources (mentioned by the conference audience)
- Benioff, Marc. “Create Strategic Company Alignment with a V2MOM,” Salesforce 360 Blog, 1 May 2020
- Shedd, Catriona. “Design System Maturity Framework,” Catriona Shedd.
- UX in Real Life – Podcast (debuting October 7 2021)
- Welchman, Lisa and Andy Vitale. Surfacing.
Designing Accessible Research Workflows (Phil Hesketh): readings and other resources
Resources mentioned in the presentation
- Towsey, Kate. “A Framework for #WhatisResearchOps,” ResearchOps Community, 24 Oct. 2018
- W3.org. “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1,” W3C, 5 Jun. 2018
- “Lighthouse,” Google Developers
- Jarrett, Caroline. “What Does Low Literacy Mean in Practice,” Effortmark, 20 Feb. 2021
- Department for Business, Innovation & Skills. “2011 Skills for Life Survey,” Gov.UK, 13 Dec. 2012
- ResearchOps Community. “A Consent Form for User Research,” ResearchOps Community
Additional resources (mentioned by the conference audience)
- Campbell, Alastair. WGAC 2.2 What’s New and What To Do with It. Youtube, Inclusive Design 24, 23 Sep. 2021
- Atkinson Hyperlegible Font, Braille Institute
- Lehrer, Rachel and Harry West. “Literacy a Hidden Hurdle to Financial Inclusion,” CGAP, 13 Jan. 2014
How to Design Your Operating Model (Sabrina Mach & Nina Wainwright): readings and other resources
Additional resources (mentioned by the conference audience)
- Killian, Jennifer et al. “Building a Design-Driven Culture,” McKinsey & Company, 1 Sept. 2015
Inclusive Design is DesignOps (Saara Kamppari-Miller): readings and other resources
Resources mentioned in the presentation
- Microsoft Design. “Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit”
- Intel, “Intel Corporate Responsibility Goals, 2030 RISE Strategy and Goals”
- Idean, “Cards for Humanity”
- “How to Recruit from Disability Communities,” Inclusive Research, 19 May 2021.
- Resources to learn more about inclusive design and accessibility:
- Holmes, Kat. Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design. MIT Press, 2018.
- Kalbag, Laura. Accessibility is for Everyone. A Book Apart, 2017.
- Jean-Baptiste, Annie. Building for Everyone: Expand Your Market With Design Practices From Google’s Product Inclusion Team. Wiley, 2020.
- Tipping Point
- Hidden Brain Media. “The Snowball Effect” Hidden Brain, 1 Mar. 2021
- Cenetola, Damon et al. “Experimental Evidence for Tipping Points in Social Conversation,” Science 360, 8 Jun. 2018, pp. 1116-1119.
- “Making Technology More Accessible,” Intel, Sep. 2021,
Additional resources (mentioned by the conference audience)
Thursday, September 30
Design as a Team PT: Practice, A Practical Guide to Cross-functional Collaboration (Christopher Taylor Edwards & Valerie Roske): readings and other resources
Resources mentioned in the presentation
- “Core Needs: Biceps.” Paloma Medina
- Roske, Valerie, and Christopher Taylor Edwards. “Design as a Team: A Guide to Cross-Functional Collaboration,” Thoughtworks, 26 Mar. 2021
(Author’s note: our article and guidebook we wrote for folks who want more!)
Additional resources (mentioned by the conference audience)
- Anderson, Gretchen and Christopher Noessel. Pair Design. O’Reilly Media, 2016.
When DesignOps Comes in HOT: A Tale of Transformed Design Org (Briana Thomas & Christina Rodriguez): readings and other resources
Additional resources (mentioned by the conference audience)
- Brown, Brené and Priya Parker. “A Meeting Makeover.” Dare to Lead, 24 May 2021
How DesignOps can Drive Inclusive Career Ladders for All (Laine Riley Prokay): readings and other resources
Resources mentioned in the presentation
- Gaucher, Danielle, et al. “Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exists and Sustains Gender Inequality.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 101, no. 1, pp. 109-128, 2011.
- “Gender Decoder.” Gender Decoder: Find Subtle Bias in Job Ads
- Maguire, Justin. “Building Relationships By Design.” The 360 Blog from Salesforce, 17 Oct 2020.
Additional Resources from Laine (Post-Presentation)
- Nordell, Jessica. “How Slack Got Ahead in Diversity,” The Atlantic, 26 April 2018.
- Holmes, Kat. “What We’re Leaving Out of the Discussion Around Inclusive Design,” AIGA Eye on Design, 28 August 2018.
- Elias, Jennifer. “The Pipeline Isn’t The Problem: Dissecting The Real Gender Bias In Tech Positions,” FastCompany, 11 May 2015.
- Steinmetz, Kay, “She Coined the Term ‘Intersectionality’ Over 30 Years Ago. Here’s What It Means to Her Today,” Time, 20 February 2020.
- Yoon, Hahna, “How to Respond to Microaggressions,” The New York Times, 3 March 2020.
- Tulshyan, Ruckika. “If You Don’t Know How to Say Someone’s Name, Just Ask,” Harvard Business Review, 9 Jan. 2020
- Annalee. “How ‘Good Intent’ Undermines Diversity and Inclusion,” The Bias, 26 Sep. 2017
- Osta, Kathleen and Hugh Vasquez. “Don’t Talk about Implicit Bias without Talking about Structural Racism,” National Equity Project, 13 Jun. 2019.
- Robichaud, Meg. “You Can’t Just Draw Purple People and Call it Diversity,” Shopify UX, 26 Jan 2018.
- Charles, Cody. “10 Common Things Well-Intentioned Allies Do That Are Actually Counterproductive,” Everyday Feminism, 6 Oct. 2105
Additional Resources (mentioned by conference audience)
- Salesforce UX Certification
- Textio Augmented Writing Platform
- Troy, Chelsea. “A Rubric for Evaluating Team Members’ Contributions to an Inclusive Culture,” Chelsea Troy, 24 May 2018.
Design Operations Metrics (Kristin Sundermeyer & Tygre Morehart): readings and other resources
Additional Resources (mentioned by conference audience)
Capturing Deep Insights (Tony Turner): readings and other resources
Resources mentioned in the presentation
- Knowledge Repository Tool Options:
Additional Resources (mentioned by conference audience)
- WeWorkUX. “Polaris UX Nuggets,” Airtable.com, 2017
- Kaplan, Kate. “DesignOps 101,” Nielsen Norman Group, 21 July 2019
Design Staffing Models (Alicia Mooty): readings and other resources
Resources mentioned in the presentation
- Tuckman, Bruce. “Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development”
- Pink, Daniel H. “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” Riverhead Books, Dec. 2009
Friday, October 1
State of DesignOps: Learnings from the 2021 Global Report (Angelos Arnis): readings and other resources
Resources mentioned in the presentation
- Posman, Rachel – “A Pocket Guide to Design Operations.” Rachel Posman, 25 Feb 2021.
- Kanae, Philip. “The Great Resignation is Here, and It’s Real.” Inc. 26 Aug. 2021.
- Boyatzis, Richard E. and Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence Has 12 Elements. Which Do You Need to Work On? Harvard Business Review, 2017
- Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. Bantam, 2006.
- “State of DesignOps 2021 Report,” DesignOps.Report, 15 Sep 2021
Additional Resources (mentioned by conference audience)
- Goleman, Daniel, Richard Boyatzis, et al. Everyday Emotional Intelligence Big Ideas & Practical Advice on How to Be Human at Work. Harvard Business Review, 2017
- DesignOps T-Shirt by Angelo Arnis
State of DesignOps Panel (Meredith Black, Tim Gilligan, Bria Alexander): readings and other resources
Resources mentioned in the presentation
- Re:Considering Podcast
- Airtable
- Tables (Google’s competitor to Airtable)
- Burnett, Bill. Designing your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life. Knopf, 2016
Additional Resources (mentioned by conference audience)
- Knight, Will. “Defeated Chess Champ Garry Kasparov Has Made Peace with AI,” Wired, 21 Feb. 2020
DesignOps and Content Strategy: Envisioning the Future Together (Natalie Dunbar): readings and other resources
Resources mentioned in the presentation
- Kaplan, Kate. “DesignOps 101,” Nielsen Norman Group, 21 July 2019
Additional Resources (mentioned by conference audience)
- Metts, Michael J. and Andy Welfle, Writing is Designing. Rosenfeld Media, 2020
- Owen, Dale. “What is Object Oriented UX?,” UX Collective, 21 Oct. 2019
Maturity Models: A Core Tool for Creating a DesignOps Strategy (Benjamin Real): readings and other resources
Resources mentioned in the presentation
Invision New Design Frontier
- Blanda, Sean. “The New Design Frontier: Explore the Widest-reaching Report on How Design Affects Business.” Invision Inside Design, 28 Jan. 2019.
- “Design Maturity Model.” Invision Inside Design.
- Grinley, Rebecca and Andrew Godfrey. New Design Frontier. Youtube, BBVA, 4 Oct. 2019
Mckinsey “The Business Value of Design”
- “The Business Value of Design.” McKinsey Quarterly, 25 Oct. 2018. (Author’s Note: Online questionnaire and download available after signing up)
- McKinsey Design. Design Matters 2018 Interview with Ben Sheppard, Youtube, McKinsey, 9 Jan. 2019.
- “The Design Ladder: Four Steps of Design Use.” Danish Design Centre, 6 May 2015.
- Powell, Douglas. “A New Study on Design Thinking is Great News for Designers.” IBM Design, 13 Mar. 2018.
Papers maturity models:
- Proença, Diogo and José Borbinha. “Maturity Models for Information Systems – A State of the Art.” Procedia Computer Science, vol. 100, pp. 1042-1049, 2016.
- Lahrmann G., et al. “Inductive Design of Maturity Models: Applying the Rasch Algorithm for Design Science Research.” Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6629, 2011. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
- Pöppelbuß, Jens and Röglinger, Maximilian, “What Makes a Useful Maturity Model? A Framework of General Design Principles for Maturity Models and its Demonstration in Business Process Management.” ECIS 2011 Proceedings. 28.
- O’Reilly, Barry. “Why Maturity Models Don’t Work.” Barry O’Reilly, 4 Dec. 2019.
- Hossain, Faruk. “UX in Southeast Asia: Examples Across Current UX Maturity Levels.” User Experience, 2020.
- Kille, John. “Creating and Implementing a Scorecard System to Increase Organizational User Experience Maturity.” User Experience, 2019.
- “The DMI: Design Value System.” DMI: Design Management Institute.
- Gurumurthy, Ragu and David Schatsky. “Pivoting to Digital Maturity.” Deloitte Insights, 13 Mar. 2019.
Have we Reached Our Peak? Spotting the Next Mountain For DesignOps to Climb (John Calhoun): readings and other resources
Resources mentioned in the presentation
- Merholz, Peter and Kristin Skinner. Org Design for Design Orgs. O’Reilly, 2016.
Look, Think, Act: The Futures-Smart Design Organization (April Reagan): readings and other resources
Resources mentioned in the presentation
- Reagan, April. Bridge Makers: Becoming a Citizen Futurist. New Degree Press, 2021.
Additional Resources (mentioned by conference audience)
- “Responsible Tech Playbook,” Thoughtworks
- Clark, Josh. AI is Your New Design Material. Youtube, AIGA Design, 7 Jun. 2019
- Kim, Sungmy. “Nonliving Stakeholders”
- “Transition Design,” Carnegie Mellon Design
- Riedy, Chris. “The Futures Triangle,” 4 Nov. 2012
- Zaidi, Leah. “The Only Three Trends that Matter: A Minimum Specification for Future-Proofing,” Journal of Futures Studies, pp. 95-102, Dec. 2020
- Redesign Everything T-Shirt by Dave
Resources from Sponsor Slacks
Miro – How the Adidas Design Ops Team Supports Every Phase of the Design Lifecycle (Ashley Reid and Barbara Neves)
Additional Resources (mentioned by conference audience)
- Design Principles Template
- Cozy Juicy Real | Virtual Team-Building | Online Board Game
- Start Meetings on a Positive Note with Love Bomb
