{"id":2988,"date":"2022-09-02T15:45:33","date_gmt":"2022-09-02T19:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/?p=2988"},"modified":"2022-09-06T17:21:41","modified_gmt":"2022-09-06T21:21:41","slug":"connecting-the-ops-with-jon-fukuda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/2022\/09\/02\/connecting-the-ops-with-jon-fukuda\/","title":{"rendered":"Connecting The Ops with Jon Fukuda"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><code>\u00a0<\/code><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/1336580947&amp;color=%23539733&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=true&amp;show_comments=false&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc; line-break: anywhere; word-break: normal; overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap; text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif; font-weight: 100;\"><a style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" title=\"The Rosenfeld Review Podcast (Rosenfeld Media)\" href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/rosenfeld-media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Rosenfeld Review Podcast (Rosenfeld Media)<\/a> \u00b7 <a style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" title=\"Connecting the Ops with Jon Fukuda\" href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/rosenfeld-media\/connecting-the-ops-with-jon-fukuda\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Connecting the Ops with Jon Fukuda<\/a><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Ahead of the 2022 DesignOps Summit, Lou speaks with guest Jon Fukuda, a co-founder of Limina where for 18 years he has been delivering UX and technical design to his clients. His focus is on facilitating the implementation of scalable research and design operations. Lou and John discuss the concept of digital transformation and explore what it looks like to walk a client through the difficult terrain of operationalizing their design processes, how to have those difficult conversations surrounding company culture, taking the lead as a change agent, and more.<\/p>\n<p>Jon is co-founder of Limina.co with 20+ years as a User Experience Specialist with a focus on UX Strategy, Design Thinking, and UI Design with experience leading human-centered requirements, strategy, interaction design, testing, and evaluation. Most recently, Jon has dedicated his efforts to Research &amp; Design Operations facilitation for scalable\/sustainable human-centered systems.<\/p>\n<p id=\"bd75\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\"><em class=\"kb\">The following article is based on the episode. <\/em><em class=\"kb\">The interview has been edited for clarity and length.<\/em><\/p>\n<p id=\"b4de\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\"><strong class=\"jf ih\">[Lou] Welcome to the Rosenfeld Review. My guest today is Jon Fukuda, co-founder of Limina, where for the past 18 years he has been delivering UX and technical design for his clients. He focuses on facilitating customers to help them implement scalable research and design operations. Jon is also one of the curators of this year\u2019s DesignOps Summit, taking place on September 8th and 9th. Welcome to the Rosenfeld Review, Jon. It\u2019s great to have you.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"f27a\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\">[Jon] Thank you. Good to be here.<\/p>\n<p id=\"78fb\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\"><strong class=\"jf ih\">[Lou] Jon, you talk a lot about this concept of digital transformation in the design ops world. Does that term mean something different now than it might have 10 or 20 years ago?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"ef23\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\">[Jon] Yeah. I see that the impact of digital on the way business happens today has kind of taken two tracks. You have the front runners who started operationalizing their digital transactional spaces early in the late 90s through websites and transactional internet spaces coming up all over the place. And then they settle into eCommerce or content management \u2014 essentially web fronts or storefront web portals to these businesses. But then another wave of disruption comes, and we have design-led organizations that have recognized opportunities to fully innovate and revamp the way that people engage with digital services to better enhance their lives. And that separation still remains today.<\/p>\n<p id=\"76e8\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\">So, we have a very strong design-led set of organizations that are part of your speaking community at the\u00a0<a class=\"au kc\" href=\"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener ugc nofollow\">DesignOps Summits<\/a>. They share their stories on how they operationalize in design, and it\u2019s almost like the future has been achieved for that group. Lagging behind them are many organizations that are still in the midst of adopting new systems and providing digital services to their customers in a way that better serves them.<\/p>\n<p id=\"5f90\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\">Those are really the people that I think of their leadership coming more from the technology side of the business or from the business management side of things and less so from folks who are on the ground with real users, doing the research and understanding problems that exist. The former are the ones I want to invite into the fold. You need to learn what it means to become a human-centered business and how to drive your capacity to research and design at scale so that you can better move through that maturity arc of your digital transactions in your digital transformation.<\/p>\n<p id=\"cb91\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\"><strong class=\"jf ih\">[Lou] When you\u2019re pitching these approaches, do you have to present differently to a company that is just beginning its digital transformation than you would to one that\u2019s a bit further along? Or is it just simply using more accessible vocabulary?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"2a42\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\">[Jon] I would say a lot of the time, we get into discussions where we have to address issues of culture. So, if the value isn\u2019t being recognized in terms of how we invest in research or a new design system, that comes from somewhere within the organization, right? So what\u2019s the misalignment of what we put our value on as an organization and how can we understand the value of better designing for our customers\u2019 needs? And a lot of times, at the surface, the value of a human-centered approach and how you can achieve that at scale makes sense.<\/p>\n<p id=\"ff05\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\">But then, when it comes to implementation on the ground, how do you actually build your components in atomic ways? You\u2019ll get pushback on the ground from either the engineers themselves or the product managers, so it ends up being a cultural battle. If you can build alliances and partnerships and tiger teams that can demonstrate the power and capacity of achieving research and design iterations at scale, those are the things that can be change agents within an organization.<\/p>\n<p id=\"b67c\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\"><strong class=\"jf ih\">[Lou] What should and shouldn\u2019t be responsibilities among design ops people who are change engines? Is there a sort of map of responsibilities for change?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"c227\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\">[Jon] You do have to pick where your strengths are and where your battles are going to have the most impact. And sometimes that\u2019s in HR where you address how you bend the arc of what your hiring structure looks like and how you staff designers and researchers to teams and what that organizational model looks like. Other times, it\u2019s in the budget arena where you address if you even have hiring capacity. Are you throwing enough at this problem in the way of investments? There\u2019s a huge host of things that come along with fully operationalizing a research and design org such as tooling to the craft, the team makeup, any procedural changes, etc. You look at where you can have that first win to prove the value of that and then you take the next step. Ultimately, I think what design operators and operational managers are looking at is, where can I show that impact and where can I make those changes that are going to provide the most value to the organizations?<\/p>\n<p id=\"20bd\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\"><strong class=\"jf ih\">[Lou] I\u2019m really interested in what works for you when you\u2019re working in digital transformation when you have a client who may be new to the process. Even in terms of vocabulary for having conversations about these challenges, are there methods or techniques that help you make an impact with your clients?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"84fd\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\">[Jon] One thing I\u2019m grateful for is to be practicing in this age where the tooling has really come a long way. So, if we talk to our customers about the value of research and insight repositories, or if we talk to them about how you can achieve deploying design at scale with the aid of good governance in the design system, we can actually show them those things almost in real time. We can pull up an example research repository, or we can pull up a design system, and it can click immediately, and they can immediately start thinking of how that applies to how they might be able to achieve research and design skills.<\/p>\n<p id=\"44ca\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\"><strong class=\"jf ih\">[Lou] So you\u2019re showing rather than telling obviously, and that\u2019s so nice to be able to do in ways that I\u2019m sure wasn\u2019t the case, not that long ago.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"7020\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\">[Jon] Yeah. We still have our own gripes and grievances; I think there could be better integration between the tools that span across the entire life cycle from getting your research planning up to date to then conducting and getting it into the repo to your design plans. And how do you build the backlog and how does that fit seamlessly into a designer\u2019s view? What are they looking at as they\u2019re pulling up their wire frames and mockups? None of that integration\u2019s really there yet. So, the plumbing for design operations is still an opportunity to be had.<\/p>\n<p id=\"5506\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\"><strong class=\"jf ih\">[Lou] Well, that\u2019s interesting. Now, in many situations, the platform becomes the Trojan horse for the movement. I\u2019m wondering if you\u2019re seeing the same thing with your clients in design systems.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"18fc\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\">[Jon] Yeah, absolutely. Especially with things that are harder to grapple with like compliance. But we can show them, \u201cYou have a couple things out of compliance and let\u2019s just take that example into your design system and show you what color contrasting and font sizes can do for that.\u201d Then you see how it would ripple through your components if you built them atomically and you run that demo really quickly. So those tools are really great.<\/p>\n<p id=\"3ec7\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\"><strong class=\"jf ih\">[Lou] I have a question about implementation and tooling to get a foot in the door. You know what you want to have happen, but what happens after you show them the light of the design system or research repository? There\u2019s an aha moment where they go, \u201cOh, culture has to change,\u201d but does that happen right away? Or do they have to invest and maybe even fail in some of these tangible platforms?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"1778\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\">[Jon] I think you can do your best with implementing systems and repositories. It\u2019s almost like a \u201cbuild it and they will come\u201d ideal. The real challenges that exist in any organization are those cultural tropes that you brought up and that we build into our conversations that if we\u2019re going to implement a design system, there\u2019s a lot that comes with it. There\u2019s a governance model. We have to come up with core tenants of how things get into a design system. How do they age out of a design system? How do you challenge the design decisions that have been codified in your system? All of that is very cultural for an organization.<\/p>\n<p id=\"a846\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\">Then you get into conversations about how we can work this in so that there\u2019s a seamless integration of a design system. And what are the things that you do have grievances with, and how might we address those? What are you willing to give up along the way? And you think about how those are such human-centered problems that exist at any organization when it comes to adopting any piece of technology. So that question of change, design leadership as a change agent, or the change management role in the organization starts to happen.<\/p>\n<p id=\"8945\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\"><strong class=\"jf ih\">[Lou] There\u2019s a lot of opportunities for many players in these conversations to be uncomfortable and it\u2019s hard to avoid as a consultant. How do you help people with that psychology, especially when it might be you and your own discomfort?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"dfa2\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\">[Jon] I think it has to do with how you position yourself in an organization. The Limina stance on providing consulting services, especially in design ops, is that we\u2019ll know we\u2019ve succeeded when you no longer need to call us. Everything we\u2019re doing with our customers is to empower them to achieve research and design at scale for themselves. So, if they\u2019re getting pushback, we can\u2019t take it personally because they\u2019re fighting with themselves at that point.<\/p>\n<p id=\"f9c5\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\">We take a very supportive role. We\u2019ve done our best to empower them to push things forward and to adopt better practices in research and design, and all the cultural aspects that come with that. Even including governance and for them to have hard conversations. If atomically constructed components is a two-way street between the engineering stack they have and how they\u2019re able to deploy things atomically, and to the designers in the Figma \u2014 setting up the libraries atomically \u2014 then you need to set up the design system to accommodate that to Wall Street. And then to have a governance model that works at both ends of that. Along the way, what happens to teams that are going through their own maturity arcs, they\u2019re all going through this process of becoming continuous learners, right? So they\u2019re all going through their human-centered design maturity arc of their own. This is great to see when it\u2019s happening well, and it\u2019s hard to see when those challenges become uncomfortable maybe you have to give up concessions along the way.<\/p>\n<p id=\"7fcc\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\"><strong class=\"jf ih\">[Lou] Before we wrap though, Jon, in Rosenfeld Review tradition, what\u2019s your gift for our listeners?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"be93\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\">I\u2019ve been reading Jake Burkhart\u2019s posts on Medium; there\u2019s a URL\u00a0<a class=\"au kc\" href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/integrating-research\" rel=\"noopener\">integratingresearch.com<\/a>\u00a0which will take you to the medium post that he\u2019s writing on research repository work that he did and continues to think about from his work at Amazon as a product manager of their insight repository. And I\u2019ll just say, one thing that I love about Jake\u2019s approach here is that he\u2019s gone deep on what it means to be a knowledge manager of research insights. He then also takes a T-shaped approach in how to democratize and scale that value across an organization that has a lot of different product teams and can actually get much more from an insight repository than just a single project team.<\/p>\n<p id=\"81d2\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\"><strong class=\"jf ih\">[Lou] Jon Fukuda, great to have you. Thanks for sharing your experience and wisdom with us on the Rosenfeld Review.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p id=\"e968\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\"><strong class=\"jf ih\">Rosenfeld Media\u2019s next conference is the DesignOps Summit, a virtual conference scheduled for September 8\u20139. Learn more at\u00a0<\/strong><a class=\"au kc\" href=\"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener ugc nofollow\"><strong class=\"jf ih\">https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"92ef\" class=\"pw-post-body-paragraph jd je ig jf b jg jh ji jj jk jl jm jn jo jp jq jr js jt ju jv jw jx jy jz ka hz gh\" data-selectable-paragraph=\"\"><a class=\"au kc\" href=\"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/rosenfeld-review-podcast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener ugc nofollow\"><em class=\"kb\">The Rosenfeld Review<\/em><\/a><em class=\"kb\">\u00a0podcast is brought to you by Rosenfeld Media. Please subscribe and listen to it on iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast platform. Tell a friend to have a listen and check out our website for over 100 podcast interviews with other interesting people. You\u2019ll find them all at\u00a0<\/em><a class=\"au kc\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rosenfeldreview.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener ugc nofollow\"><em class=\"kb\">RosenfeldReview.com<\/em><\/a><em class=\"kb\">.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 The Rosenfeld Review Podcast (Rosenfeld Media) \u00b7 Connecting the Ops with Jon Fukuda &nbsp; Ahead of the 2022 DesignOps Summit, Lou speaks with guest Jon Fukuda, a co-founder of Limina where for 18 years he has been delivering UX and technical design to his clients. His focus is on facilitating the implementation of scalable [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2988"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2988"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3031,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2988\/revisions\/3031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/designopssummit2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}