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Distributed, Democratized, Decentralized: Finding a Research Model to Support Your Org

Everyone is talking about democratization of research–distribution of research across teams. That’s not new. The conversation has shifted from whether to democratize, to how, and how much. In this panel we’ll talk about different approaches to holding on, and letting go, to UXR in an org. We’ll cover:

  • Pros and cons of different approaches
  • Lessons learned the hard way
  • How to think about a model that works for your org

And more!

The Digital Journey: Research on Consumer Frustration and Loyalty

What drives customers to take the first step in their digital journey? What friction can knock their journey off-kilter or end it completely?

We surveyed thousands of consumers after they visited websites across multiple industries to understand how digital experiences can make or break customer loyalty – and ultimately, your bottom line.

In this session, you’ll see the results of our research and a data-rich deep dive on why website visitors fail to complete their intended missions, the barriers that cause them to give up, and where they go after a bad digital experience.

Research Operations at Scale

Research is an inherent part of design, and operationalizing how insights are generated and used is one of the more challenging aspects of design operations. Overcoming the lack of good tools, taming the complexity of research at scale, and navigating the world of different forms of inquiry are just a few of the obstacles to overcome. That said, we are starting to see a range of benefits from implementing research operations in modern design organizations.

Compass 101: Growing Your Career In A Startup World

Let’s talk about design careers–and about doing design work under the influence of just the right amount of caffeine. These Compass design leaders guide you through a discussion of a day in the life of product designers at a fast-growing enterprise. And they’ll also talk about their journeys getting there.

  • Hear about design and career opportunities in a technology company that is bringing meaningful disruption to real estate.
  • See what it’s like to design beautiful productivity tools for real estate agents and an industry that seems to thrive on complexity.
  • Get insight into how your own career path is reflected in the many paths that lead to good product design.

What It’s Like To Be a User Researcher at Compass

Join the moderator, Kayla Farrell (Sr User Researcher), as she runs a Q&A session with Chelsey Glasson (Staff User Researcher), Sean Fitzell (User Research Manager), and Jared LeClerc (Sr User Researcher), as they discuss life as a user researcher at Compass.

The Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 1) (Videoconference)

If you’ve been wondering just how DesignOps has evolved to its current state, where it’s going, and how you can influence its future, you won’t want to miss our upcoming two-part series of DesignOps community calls. It’s your chance to learn from expert panelists and participate in a community exercise centered around mapping out the practice of DesignOps.

Esteemed emeritus DesignOps curator Dave Malouf and emcee Meredith Black provide a firsthand account of the trends and factors that have influenced the direction of the practice over the past five years. We then begin working on our own mapping of DesignOps as a community, led by curator Farid Sabitov.

Hiring in DesignOps: A Critical Study on How to Hire and Get Hired

In this talk, I plan to share my experience over the last year (April 2023 – April 2024) trying to get hired in Design Operations after being laid off from a Design Operations Manager role at Meta. I will share my stories – both the good and the bad – and what I learned from those moments. I’ll then shift my focus from the candidate experience to how we as a community can improve the job search experience from the perspectives of hiring teams and recruiters. I have and will continue to source thoughts and feedback from professionals in these roles.

Integrating generative AI into enterprise products: A case study from dscout

Join dscout for an in-depth case study walking through a first-year journey of integrating Generative AI into an established enterprise product. In a session tailored specifically for product teams, the speakers will delve into the paradigm shifts in UX professionals to technical relationships, strategies, and processes.

dscout’s Jonathan Fairman, VP of Product, and Kevin Johnson, Head of AI, will discuss how the stochastic nature of AI technologies led to the move of a piloting approach to development and traditional wireframe testing of concepts no longer possible.

(Remote) Service Design: A Transformation Case Study

Alana Washington will illustrate how rapid iteration, 100s of virtual post-its, and a bit of design therapy helped transform our service model during a global pandemic.

The Power of Difficult Conversations: A Case Study on How We Introduced Design Ops in the Federal Government Space

A large federal agency was interested in improving the experience that individuals have with their digital services, as well as the velocity at which they were able to improve those services. But through our research, we found that they didn’t have the design roles, tools, or processes in place to support this goal and make it successful.

As a digital services firm that specializes in human-centered design and design ops, we came up with a plan to get them where they needed to be. We started by having a difficult conversation with them about design maturity, what it would take to be successful, and how design ops could help. We then introduced a series of training sessions on human-centered design, which prepared us to have conversations about design roles and processes, as well as tools. And finally, we were able to collaborate with them through a series of engagements to see how these things should work in practice.

Through our experience, we learned this is not an uncommon challenge. There are likely many entities (both public and private) that know they need to evolve their design practices, but don’t know how. By sharing how we introduced design ops to a federal client, we hope to inspire others to help promulgate design ops in a wider variety of sectors and client types.