#DesignOps Summit

[designaday]

UX Careers: Pathways

I was invited to sit on a panel discussing UX careers recently, and I'd like to share some of the questions that were posed. This is going to be a new series of posts that I'll string out over the next few weeks.

What career pathways do you believe have emerged for UX professionals in the past 10 years?

The first one that jumps to mind is DesignOps. Derived from DevOps, Dave Malouf coined the term in 2014, and it caught on rapidly, largely because a lot of people were thinking about it and trying to mature it, but they hadn't had a name for it. Dave worked with Lou Rosenfeld to launch the DesignOps Summit in 2017. Today, large design organizations are staffing DesignOps teams.

Another fairly recent career path is that of UX Engineer. This is a hybrid role: part frontend developer but with a true design bent. They have the chops to contribute production-ready code, and they understand interaction design and visual design enough to realize and respect the intent of the designer. They ensure that implementation is faithful to the design.

I would also suggest that, while UX researchers have been around for a long time, the role has really come into its own in the past 10 years. ResearchOps followed right on the heals of DesignOps, and there was widespread acknowledgement that we, as designers, still had a lot to learn about the rigor of quality research. Teams were maturing to the point that research specialists were becoming common.

The overall trend is that as UX has matured as a discipline, it has resulted in more specialization, which provides more career pathways.

[uiuxstudioblog]

The Ultimate Guide On DesignOps: Definition, Concept & Steps

DesignOps suggests orchestrating and optimizing people, methods, and craftsmanship to enhance the value of design and large-scale printing. It is a cumulative word for discussing challenges such as:

Expanding and improving design teams 

Finding and hiring staff with the right skills 

Creating effective workflows 

Improving the quality and impact of design results

The purpose of DesignOps is to define methods and standards that govern scalable clarifications for these queries. Helps designers focus on designing and researching. It is useful to know what DesignOps is.

Each field will have its solutions and DesignOps is ours. UX professionals, more than most, need to figure out how to deal with them more effectively. We often develop faster than the rest of the company. By knowing the value and high ROI of UX, the company quickly adds staff and responsibility to the UX team.

How Can You Implement DesignOps?

The reality is that the design team's difficulties are immense, so there are several areas of focus for the DesignOps Summit. This comprehensive look at cool points fascinates companies looking to establish themselves in DesignOps for the first time. While their identity is growing positively, most companies have relatively low DesignOps maturity, lack of reliability, served as DesignOps teams and their comparable launch. It means that there are few tried and tested models to study or follow.

We use different ways to implement  DesignOps and its main steps in companies. There are basically 3 levels that companies use to identify where to invest in DesignOps. 

Acts flexibly and quantitatively:

Research The Problem Space

The main step in creating a DesignOps practice consists of figurative steps. It is not necessary to go directly into the description and execution of activities. Preferably plan a DesignOps experience like any other design issue. First, identify and explain the difficulties in finding a better solution.

The DesignOps menu describes a complete set of operations that organizations want to focus on when planning and executing methods to assist designers. It is difficult for a single person or team to focus on these areas at the same time. The research phase identifies the most effective pain points and areas with huge ROI potential within these design options, so  DesignOps exercises are tailored accordingly. 

Interview documents have a modern design process, as observed by designers and non-designers alike. Document the design projects and methodologies used throughout the design process, the tools and people involved in each step, and quantitative metrics identify waste and value. These metrics are effective when adding or adding activities, meetings, or design tools are suggested.

Define DesignOps Value

Analysis and integration of current challenges that promote the discussion about whether DesignOps and what it is and brings an advantage to the organization. The research phase has certainly highlighted the weaknesses in the 3 panels of the DesignOps menu. These weak points shape planned efforts or initiatives. 

First, identify potential areas of opportunity where they are useful. We base it on investigating where the most effective weak spots are. It is necessary to highlight the main areas of interest beyond the DesignOps menu and create a consolidated and practical subset of areas of the DesignOps Center specifically for the identified vulnerabilities. 

You are establishing agreements for the newly developed DesignOps purpose and the advanced roles or resources required for its implementation. You need to do your research, resolve the merged DesignOps priorities, and include fonts on a tour. Present the idea to stakeholders, collect feedback, and improve it if necessary.

Prioritize & Roadmap

You need to set goals, plans, and also primary tactical projects within a flexible time frame. 

When companies start investing in DesignOps works, avoid the lure of developing tactics quickly and instinctively. It's time to identify a number of key activities that are being solved and measured within a consistent timeline. 

An appropriate set of primary initiatives needs to be developed, p. Ex. B. Know a strategic objective related to each prioritized pain point. Then brainstorm tactical objectives that support those necessary objectives. Tactical objectives are special and measurable, like tactical objectives that promote a greater perception of the value of the UX team.

The Concept Of DesignOps

It is to assist the design team in association with the customer-centric vision of the company. It appears with a focus on our customers. 

The designers have tools and methods to respond to the customer. There is a need for permission to look to the prospective teams to communicate with a relevant vision that provides deep customer relationships. 

Significant customer experiences are where they start their actions for products and services designers create responsibility. It is about how a customer appears throughout the journey using different points of contact and communications within a company.

The inputs guide the design team's ability to achieve the goal by facilitating communication for the large-scale organization. 

Your Purpose shows why the design team is moving forward and how it works. A design team grows and becomes holistic, strategic and creates better value for the company. 

We know that talent enables a positive experience for employees, affects the ability of the company to participate, develop the best talent, and focus on the skills and behaviors associated with that cause. It is useful to know the concept of what  DesignOps will implement later.

Why Is DesignOps Important?

Partnerships with designers, product managers, and engineers ensure that each person works with the appropriate strategic product objectives. 

DesignOps Summit is relevant to product managers for several reasons: 

DesignOps helps product managers ensure that designers and their cross-functional product team are in close communication with the product development team.

Product managers ensure that design and design have coordinated their schedules in such a way that design returns its work to expansion at regular intervals. Obstacles diminish or delay as the team must serve the other to finish their work. 

Product managers name fonts because a DesignOps professional estimates how many designers are needed for a project. It also helps to plan additional construction resources during the project if necessary.

So we are using it in various stages. When we know your process, we quickly understand what DesignOps is and what its purpose is.

Our Approach For DesignOps In Our Team

UIUX Studio adequately includes DesignOps in our work. Mostly two broad methods that we use at our UI-UX design company. One involves allowing certain roles or even hiring new people and the other just requires rethinking.

Create DesignOps Culture

With this approach, we must focus the mindset of our team to create and design a more combined part of the development plans and product schedule. 

We estimate design team hours and resources required for development cycles, develop these plans over longer periods of expansion, and decide when to move improvement work into the design. 

In the DesignOps culture, all of our team members work as leaders, product managers, design team members, or stakeholders. It's not about assigning DesignOps as a role or hiring a new person. There is a need for variety in thinking and support beyond the cross-functional product team. We know that it does not work independently but in a similar partnership with the development and product teams.

Set up a Standalone Role

It is a comparatively new term. DesignOps plan has swiftly increased with more advanced product businesses. The correlating design performance within a broader context of the cross-functional product team. It has been thriving enough so that DesignOps experts and entire companies are becoming more common. 

Conclusion

A design ops expert comes from a design background, a product background, or a project management background. Our user experience design company offers a variety of design-related services. Hire UI Design Agency is the best way to grow your business around the world and increase your online presence. 

Let's chat on Skype to find out more. We look forward to serving you.

[fumbliesthots]

2018 - Year in Review

Hot Mess Bitch à la Jan Bon - the most impressive dish I made (or participated in making) this year, on 31 Dec 2018. I guess now this space is for photos of what I did on NYE, following tradition of last year. It comprised of honeyed butter biscuit (baked from scratch!), sausage cream gravy, garlic polenta grits, cheesy scrambled eggs, topped with more uncased Italian sausage. 

I was kinda procrastinating writing this post I guess because I was placing such unnecessarily high expectations on this post to be the motherlode of all reflections this year, especially since I have started keeping a handwritten (almost-daily) journal recently. Sorry bloggy, I hope you don’t feel jealous.

This year feels too short and too long at once. I almost cannot remember what I did for the first half of the year (partly also because my journal writing habit only started post-June when Janz handed me my first journal book and encouraged me to start writing in it so that I can remember and process stuff that happened in my life). 

Maybe it feels long because I accidentally travelled a little too much this year (What blasphemy! Like too much is a thing when it comes to travelling?) But that was mostly thanks to the opportunity to do so from my work trips. Let me count the cities: Rome, Venice, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Brussels, Bruges, Krabi, NYC, Seattle, Vancouver, Melaka.

Oh yeah and I turned 30 this year too. It’s surprisingly uneventful, but I guess this year is when I started feeling more like an adult, less wet behind the ears and more okay with being myself. Especially since now at work I’m surrounded by so many young people, and it feels kinda weird that they seem to look up to me and come to me for advice. 

New things I tried in 2018

Improv. I took an improv 101 class at the beginning of the year. It was good fun and pushed me out of my comfort zone to be less self-conscious and more spontaneous. I see some potential in using the concept of improv for the design process and I hope one day I can convince my colleagues to go check it out as well.

Piloxing. I wanted to make use of ActiveSG credits for the first time, and the idea of mixing pilates and kickboxing intrigued me. It was ok, pretty fun and not as intense as I expected. It’s kinda like a high-impact cardio exercise. Not my thing but I enjoyed it while it lasted.

Speaking at public events. I was invited as a speaker and panelist at General Assembly to talk about my experience as a designer. The first one was scary (and embarrassingly eventful). The next 2 as a panelist were more relaxed as I didn’t need to prepare that much. There is kind of an adrenaline kick doing this kind of thing sometimes, haha. 

Journal writing. I have to thank Janz for encouraging this habit by giving me a notebook for my birthday. I think writing down thoughts and just things that happen in the day really helps me process stuff and is kinda therapeutic. I would write about conversations I had, things I observed, and maybe even stuff I watched. 

PTTC aka Physical Touch Treatment Centre. This might sound a bit weird but in our Krabi UX teambonding trip, the girls were training me to be more touchy in showing sayang. That included patting heads and linking hands. And now I have become kinda good at it. (Okay.. this still sounds weird!)

Confessed to a boy. Rejected by said boy. But now we are good friends and I think I’m happy with that. And I think I’m pretty low maintenance and self-sufficient as a person/non-gf. This year I also concluded my online dating experiment and the result is the realisation that I don’t really need to find a partner to have a fulfilled life. Actually I already knew that from the start but this was a validation. But I’m grateful to have met so many guys from outside of my social bubble that I wouldn’t have met in otherwise. And the experience of meeting strangers also trained me to be more thick skin and be more socially confident. Glad I did this.

Things that made me sad in 2018

Colleagues that left. Early this year I was kinda shook when Michelle left. Even though we are not that close as friends, she and I had a good partnership as my researcher. Then Leonard, then Lydia, our dear POs. And then Gaofeng and Ernie left. My fellow Easy Team pioneers from the very beginning. :(

Macbook died. Itchy backside made me prematurely install Mojave OS before it was company-approved. My computer ended up getting corrupted and the IT guy tried so hard to help me save it for 2 whole weeks. In the end with all means tried, there was no choice to reformat the whole thing, and I lost all my files. That was an emotional 2 weeks.

SG team got booted off project. I found out after coming back from a trip and it hit me like a suddenly flying slap. But I don’t think it was anyone’s fault, just circumstances. And now I actually look forward to new challenges after this project comes to an end for me.

Chief Laihock’s passing. Chief was a great leader and strong pillar holding up GUI for the past 11 years, an inspiration to me and many people who know him. His passing was a sudden one and because of this keeping the kampung became a problem. I feel for the core team members who are working so hard to keep things running and continuing to fight this fight. Such passion is admirable and makes me want to do whatever I can to help.

Things I’m happy about in 2018

Read more books. Somehow managed to squeeze in more books into my reading diet this year. I’ve been gifted and lent many books this year and I guess because of that I was obliged to finish them, and that turned out to be a good thing. I also somehow unknowingly influenced some young’ins to start reading as a habit too, which surprised me. 

Learnt to monkey bar. I had a random goal of learning how to monkey bar in September. I’ve never ever been able to do it, when I first saw other kids playing on it in pri sch and felt left out and embarrassed because I couldn’t. But this year I decided to see if I could train myself to do it, perhaps because the bar was always at the fitness station downstairs mocking me. And in November I showed it. That sense of jubilance and exhilaration I had when I finally made that first swing from one bar to the next was amazing. And in the next couple of weeks of training I finally made it through the entire ladder. Woohoo!

Strengthened bonding with colleagues. This year the UX team has expanded quite a bit. We welcomed in Janz, Lily, Oppa, Shirshir, Shishi, Lulu and Lala. And we got close almost instantly, which I think is unusual for team of such size. Boss has done an incredible job in scaling positive team culture somehow, and I think for next year our challenge is how to spread this culture beyond just our team. 

Launched a fundraising campaign for GUI. The GUI web team’s work did not slack off since the launch of the 2.0 website last year. We did another release of 2.1 with some improvements after conducting some usability/feedback session with folks. And then in August when news of Laihock’s passing triggered the urgency to raise funds to keep GUI going and keep the land, we worked very hard meeting every week to come up with ideas on how to start a fundraising and awareness campaign. We pushed this campaign out in November and now to continue the efforts to tweak and optimise the message. Grateful to have a supportive volunteer team working hard together on this.

Didn’t take an MC this year. Last year I got sick quite often, almost once every 2 months. Then Gaofeng gave a suggestion that intrigued me. Exercise more. I decided to give it a try. And I’m proud to report that ever since I started exercising every alternate morning, my MC count this year has declined by 100%. I still got sick once or twice this year but it wasn’t so serious that I had to be bedridden. And I found going for a jog in the morning actually lifts my mood for the day. Two birds, bingo.

Knitted a hat. I joined our office’s Knit For Love group to learn how to knit a hat, and all knitted items would be donated to Singapore Cancer Society. I managed to finish mine in about 2-3 months after lots of getting stuck and having help. I was surprised that there are actually quite a few knitting enthusiasts in our office. And even to see a different side to those very notoriously fierce colleagues in the office - they were very kind and patient when it comes to teaching and guiding others. I love discovering new kinder sides of people.

Favourite things of 2018

Nonfiction Book - Crucial Conversations. Borrowed this from Lydia’s bookshelf. We even have a book review club at her house now to share our learnings. This book has valuable advice on how to handle tough conversations and I hope I could put it to proper practice and truly learn to do it.  

Fiction Book - A Dog’s Purpose. A gift from Janz she got at Strand Bookstore. This was a surprisingly thought-provoking book despite the silliness of the premise. Best of all, it’s only USD 48 cents. 

Podcast - Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. This one was recommended by Wei, a new friend I made from the DesignOps summit. Nothing can replace my love for Invisibilia but this one was another surprising gem. I like how they dissect and examine each chapter through lens of different themes and that made this beloved series even more meaningful.

Youtube Channel - Vox. I like the variety of smart educational and timely content presented in a visually appealing and simple to understand way. I especially liked their series explaining music and politics.

Music - Tessa Violet. Dodie. Chillhop radio. Pomplamoose.

Day memory - Cycling in Bruges with Eos. This was literally my idea of a perfect day come true. We had a cheap and cheerful breakfast at Hema, then rented a bike, and cycled all the way to Belgium in cool autumn weather, passing beautiful fields of flowers and farmlands and smelly cows. Had a sumptuous seafood lunch before heading back to town, serendipitously stumbling into an art gallery opening with free wine. Had a pigeon for dinner, then ending the day listening to jazz at a bar. 

Trip memory - NYC/Seattle/Vancouver with Janz. I liked our adventurous/slipshod spirit and the resulting shenanigans we got into because of that. And all our silly and thoughtful conversations in between. And the food we got to try and coming up with a weird rating system for them. 

Bonus - Making a Chinese rap music video with Jess. Jess and I bonded a lot during this 3-week Prague rotation trip. I liked practicing our rap every day walking to and from our office and hotel, and basically everywhere we go. She is such an easy person to have fun with, and we get a kick filming ourselves and annoying Leonard along the way (bless him).

Things to work on in 2019

Figure out how to be a leader. I recently got promoted to Design Ops Lead of the team. There will be a lot of dealing with people and processes, and that is something I have to learn how to manoeuvre. But having a new challenge is always exciting.

Being more articulate and assertive. Along with the above might mean learning how to better communicate expectations and handling tough situations.

Plan more and be less slipshod about things. There are times to be happy-go-lucky and be spontaneous about things. But wisdom is knowing when to pay attention and take care of the details, especially when the outcome might affect other people, not just myself.

Being more caring with my parents. Last year one of my resolutions was to improve my communication with my parents. I tried by listening to more chinese podcasts and speaking chinese more often. But I realised sometimes talking is not enough, it’s the tone and body language. How you show attention and care that matters. 

Continue staying healthy. In the mind and the body. That means keeping and perhaps even increasing my regular exercise regime. And meditate more regularly! 

So here’s what I did on the first day of 2019 – Taking a beautiful hike with my lovely buddies! It’s a gonna be happy new year, oh yes.