CREATIVE LEADER
Fusing creativity, user insights, and technical expertise with thoughtful design and strategic thinking to create exceptional experiences and elevate user satisfaction.
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DEFINITION:
DesignOps is a human-centered approach to building stronger design teams that support the orchestration of individuals, processes and tools to amplify creativity and impact at scale.
DesignOps is a collective term for addressing challenges such as:
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growing and evolving design teams
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finding and hiring people with the right skills
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creating efficient workflows
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improving the quality and impact of design outputs.
Various stage of research and synthesis of information
Brand Planning Process
Design Operations ( Design Ops)
Human Centered Design, Cross Discipline Collaboration, Solution-Oriented, Marketing Strategy, Accessibility,
On-Boarding, Processes, Influence
Challenge:
Our agency had grown organically in size in the past 10 years and without a system in place for scale or efficiency across disciplines, in particular, for the various creative resources.
There was no single source of truth or structure, documented Ways of Working, and we relied solely on the transference of this department knowledge on the respective individuals with the longest tenure.
This lack of structure caused multitudes of friction
and pain points for the teams and no less, an unquantifiable loss of both efficiency and revenue for the agency.
Process:
By advocating about Design Ops in the agency, I was 1 of 10 people of the 350K+ in our organization and the only one from our acquired agency selected to attend the 2021 Global Design Ops Conference in London to research and gain as much insight as I could on various topics to share with broader team. ( I gladly joined the 4:00 am calls to hear what these experts said.)
1) People- Centered:
Post conference, I created a group for further collaboration with my global peers, delved into research interviewing team members, white-boarding, and documenting pain points to get a clear sense of the many challenges we were trying to solve.
2) Solve the Right Problem:
With whiteboard and notes in hand, clustered learnings, did a priority matrix to identify which challenges and HMW scenarios for individual processes and identify the highest priority to solve.
3) Everything is Connected:
To ensure productive use of team downtime, I presented the framework to leadership for approval and funding to support the non-billable code. In addition, developed a process for team members to get involved to support this effort. This system continues to be tweaked as this project evolves.
4) Small Wins:
While this is an ongoing herculean effort in the agency, we developed three high priority processes including onboarding, yearly brand tactic planning and accessibility along with a phased approach for implementing.
In addition, in regards to the accessibility awareness and process for implementation in our studio, my influence caused my direct report to create a personal goal to become an SME in the subject and is planning to acquire certifications.