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Starting up DesignOps at a Consultancy Firm, Improving UX Maturity

Helping the UX culture flourish and strengthening employer branding with an agile apporach

Overview

One of Sweden's biggest consultancies, with 80+ UX designers, rapidly expanded. Seeing the need, I formed DesignOps to manage shared tools, materials, UX services, and build a vibrant UX community, aiming to nurture top-notch UX designers in Sweden.

DesignOps entails orchestrating and optimizing people, processes, and craftsmanship to elevate the influence and significance of design on a large scale.

Results

The implementation of Consid DesignOps has been a real success, addressing critical needs and unlocking significant value within the organization.

DesignOps became a blueprint and inspired the company to create more internal specialist groups to adopt the practice of spreading knowledge, creating structure in expert areas and share experience. Now, the company has over 15 other groups with a similar structure, but for other speiclized ares such as BI & Analytics, Mobility, Security and Design & Communication.

Role

  • Strategist
  • Project manager
  • Researcher

Deliverables

  • UX talks each month
  • UX onboarding material
  • UX Audit Offer Package (Launched on May 6, 2021)
  • UX mentoring/buddie program
  • Recruitment work samples
  • Centralized go-to UX-research tool
  • UX research fast track education
  • Customer journey Offer Package

Tools & Methods

  • Double diamond
  • Design Thinking
  • Microsoft Forms
  • Figma
  • OneNote
  • PowerPoint
  • Excel
  • Useberry

DesignOps Value:
A B C

All of the activities and deliverables I've created together with the DesignOps core team aligns with the values pinpointed in it's conception: Agile, Business and Community

Agile

👉 Dared to experiment with ideas and solutions.
👉 Evaluated and improved continuously.

When there was a need to track expertise and skills among all UX designers, we promptly established an initial version using a Teams worksheet. Subsequently, it was migrated to Monday, and finally transitioned to a tool named Cinode.

Business

👉 The Company and Clients needs at the center
👉 Create value for employees, the company and clients
👉 Monitor changes and trends and respond with new ways of working and offers

DesignOps has compiled sales materials, worksheets, PowerPoint presentations, and instructional manuals for offerings like UX audits and customer journey mapping.

Community

👉 Build and foster a strong UX community at the company
👉 Work multidisciplinary and across offices
👉 "Have fun and grow as you like!"

DesignOps hosts bi-weekly lunch sessions featuring education, inspiration, or trends in UX and related domains. Additionally, we pair UX designers interested in mentoring or discussion based on their interests. This fosters a stronger sense of community, allowing UX designers to familiarize themselves with each other's expertise within the company.

Contributing to internal and external needs at the company

I set up some initial areas in which the implementation of DesignOps would contribute to and enhance various aspects for the company.

Tools

Collect and increase findability for shared UX tools and materials. An example of this is access to share tools such as Useberry for UX research and tools such as the UX audit checklist.

Administer

Centralize management of common tools, materials and templates. Making sure they are up to date. An example of this is our UX onboardig which is used in onboarding all new UX employees.

Best Practice

Land in and disseminate best practices. An example of this is creating a template of interview questions for employees and how we run customer journeys.

Readiness level

DesignOps helps enhance employees' preparedness to meet new market demands. For instance, there's a growing need for certified UX designers with expertise in accessibility. We've implemented an education track to ensure all UX employees have a strong foundation in accessibility.

Training & Education

Increase the number of UX employees discovering suitable career development tracks, enrolling in courses, and successfully completing training. This results in a higher number of skilled UX experts within the company.

Brand Equity

Strengthen Consid's brand in collaboration with HR and recruitment around design expertise.

Impact

DesignOps continues to generate multiple positive impacts for the company

External Benefits

  • Recruitment - Employer branding and word-of-mouth promotion.
  • Sales - CV-boost through continuous education, immediate access to the right expertise, sales materials showcasing a robust UX team.

Internal Benefits

  • For Employees - Opportunities for personal and professional development, talent retention.
  • In Projects and Assignments - Integration of best practices, readily available tools and materials, enhanced delivery quality.

Long-term Benefits

  • Future-proofing - Proactively addressing changes in the IT industry, broadening UX offerings, honing specialized skills in FinTech, E-commerce, Systems, Communication, Digital Services, etc.

Process

The initiative involved thorough research to understand the existing challenges and opportunities within the UX community at Consid.

Launching DesignOps

👉 Conducted an in-depth employee survey to identify pain points and needs.
👉 Developed a pilot plan, incorporating feedback from leadership
👉 Implemented the pilot phase with regular check-in from leadership
👉 Iterated on the project based on pilot results
👉 Delivering a summary during yearly employee survey with all the UX designers at the company

Boosting UX research: Research tool and education

Introducing a central research tool for all UX designers, I identified the need for a shared user testing license. This reduces frustration and time employees spend searching and discussing tools across different channels. Every client project have saved multiple hours and increased designer confidence in their design decisions with real data.

UX Hot-Takes lunch session to increase interactivity during lunch sessions and promote a reflective UX practice.

The UX Hot-Takes format is a way to increase engagement and interactivity during lunch sessions. A statement is presented, participants then vote on their stance, and finally, we discuss why we chose one side or the other. The rules of engagement are: 'Respect each other's opinions; we don't judge right and wrong in this forum. Be active—share and listen.' Around 45 participants join these sessions, and the effects have been a more open discussion climate, with people sharing their opinions and gaining new perspectives on challenging situations.

Screenshot from a presentation where there is a pie chart demonstrating that 5 participants agree and 23 disagree.

What I learned

Choosing the right challenges to solve

Me and the other designOps team member face time constraints for DesignOps tasks alongside regular assignments and client work. In navigating this, I've gained valuable insights into assessing the potential impact of suggestions and requests directed to the DesignOps team. My role has evolved to discern when to say go on an idea so that it aligns with the overarching strategy, and when to prioritize other tasks for the time being.

Community Empowerment

Empowering the UX community leads to increased expertise and value creation for both the organization and its clients.

Fitting strategic UX work into an organisation

Comprehending the intricacies of the organization empowered me to strategically present this initiative to the appropriate leadership at the opportune moment. My primary goal was consistently centered on elevating my UX colleagues and fostering collaboration with other divisions, ensuring that the desired impact was effectively realized.

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