Day 3-Scaling Success: Paving the Path from DesignOps to VP

Attendees
Facilitator: Deanna Washington
  • Design Program Manager, Adobe Design
Tim Allen (TA)
  • VP, Design & Research, Instacart
Jeff Corucelle (JC)
  • VP, User Experience & Chief Designer, MicroStrategy
John Maeda (JM)
  • VP of Design and Artificial Intelligence, Microsoft
Matt Raw (MR)
  • VP, Product Design Culture & Operations, The New York Times
Erica Tjader (ET)
  • VP of Design and Research, SurveyMonkey
DW:

 

Hello everyone, I work as DPM for Aodbe and happy to have you join last session and wonderful group of panelists

 

Welcome panelists, so will jump right in.

 

DW:
  1. I’d like to talk about career journeys. Perception of DOps has evolved significantly over the years. What is one thing you wish you knew?
ET: Began career journey in DOps and didn’t know it
  • Coming into field and interviewed for design role at eBay and doing operational work for us and how entered the field
  • Set of skills that have helped me contribute to teams, as a leader
    • Op strengths make me a better designer
  • Can look back and recognize as DesignOps
JC: Would have loved to know importance of not siloing DOPs and process to be within UX
  • Earlier you can collaborate with other ops areas like DevOps and Marketing, make it a living breathing thing and part of process and will build promoters through organization
  • Didn’t call it DesignOps, and took groundswell to not mainstream within org, but across industry
    • If starting out DOps journey, and trying to evangelize sooner you can partner with other Ops systems more successful to be
Deanna: What results can you get from that ops partnership?
  • JC: Everyone becomes part of UX if partnership happens
    • UX seen as belonging to everyone not just the UX team, but don’t own it from engineers who build it and get the word out, everyone part of experience and collaborate across departments makes people feel part of design thinking and have unified vision
    • Products reflect company silos shipped out of
MR: On my career, spent 15 years as a designer then a manager in roles of DL
  • Common for me throughout this  is that designers can convene people and set the agenda
    • Worked in agency, and focus there was on artifacts and wireframes
    • Realizing I could ask questions or ask people who ran the agency asked to look at it different way
      • Ability to imagine future and visualize it and bring people around provocations
      • Wish got to this faster, as it has all kind of benefits
    • Valuable skill, and have unique power to drive conversation
    • Everyone feels they can own UX as a result
  1. Skill building as next question. What is one skill to differentiate audience as they advance in careers? What do you look for?
— TA: Combination of skills
  • Courage and curiosity and being able to manifest and build courage for firm conviction– in face of habitualized thinking mindsets or biases
    • Can you go down blind alleys with determination and courage
  • Curious enough to shift firmly held conviction for new viewpoints, perspectives and combination as well and curiosity and leading with kindness and approach
    • AI doesn’t have soft skills
— JM: Like curiosity and courage
  • Would add audacity and like people who are more senior learn to be less audacious, and more courageous
    • We are in Unkown Unknow quadrant, as generative AI is radically different from past and too much wisdom is not good
  • Having useful audacity is key right now
— Deanna: How would you define audacity?
  • Like Jr. people as they are stupid and willing to ask the dumb questions
    • Becoming smarts means you get too used to things and knowing the answer
    • Audacity means you have the beginner’s mind, while often penalized get shut out
      • Encourage junior people to speak up and lead in AI era
  • Sr. people are too set in ways, and we need to move
  • Ask questions people feel silly to ask
Deanna: Second for others to chime in?

 

— JC: Ability to evangelize across departments and help others and plan things out
  • Any part to touch to evangelize process an UX culture and permeating the organization
    • The more you can do this and encourage team to do this, the more org can be design driven
Deanna: How for introverts to do this?

 

— JC: Use your design as platform and doing that need whole set of skills
  • If sound in core skills and process use what you know to help others
    • Even if you stumble people will be excited to have you as part of the team
— ET: Ask tough questions and be proactive and do something about it, and create great opportunities for themselves

 

— Deanna: Advice for those who want to understand problem before solutioning?

 

— ET: Think design thinking  solving problems with constraints,
  • Will never have context, so should be able to take info available, and act in absence of all possible  info
— MR: Be humble you don’t know the solution. Solution doesn’t have to be fully formed and understanding what the problem even is and entering spaces with humility

 

— JC: Per John Cleese, of all creative he worked with, they all had ability to tolerate sensation of not having answer to problem longer than others, which let them play with problem to come up with solution
  • Don’t be immediately decisive, as you can stop ideation and collaboration to take place
  1. Key talking points to help org invest in DOps?
— ET: Don’t invest org in DOps, but invest in solving problem they have, which DOps is a solution for

 

— JC: Good advice, as a new UX tool will appear as cost-center, but as vehicle for solution to efficiency works
  • Another point is what would happen to engineering if they lost DevOps, and how that brought consistency to a process
  1. What would be first 90 days goals for DOps director or hire?
–TA: Think of most things as design challenge, and understand audience
  • Put yourself in their shoes and what challenges they are facing and languages they speak
    • Language of business metrics, brand, emotional impact
  • As you grasp challenges, frame approach of those challenges collaboratively with teams
  • People will not care how much you know, until they know how much you care about them and their problems
    • Establish trust
    • Understand what language they are speaking
— MR: A big yes, and to this. Super valuable to grasp what designers need and what company needs from design that not getting today
  • Fuller understanding of both, can imagine what to create and how to advance both of interests together
  • Mention of programs is huge
  1. If you could wave magic wand and change one part of design, what would it be?
— JM: Gravitate to speaking many languages. Design language is worst possible to speak, as it’s so comfortable
  • Short-term thinking
  • Beautiful space, but poor to communicate
— Eradicate belief of communication magically occurring, and things are cyclical, and wait for prime opportunity

 

— Communicate importance of things to other departments

 

— JC: Would be to make design truly transparent and visible to all organizations all the time
  • Best ideas take massive amount of effort to take ideas to decision makers
  • UX in great companies is often leading innovators, but many companies are product or engineering driven and UX is supplemental function
    • Good for more orgs to realize that UX has great ideas
— Deanna: I would like to thank the audience and panel for this discussion
  • Hope this makes you excited for the future