DesignOps: Study Guide

DesignOps: An Overview

Definition: DesignOps refers to the orchestration and optimization of people, processes, and craft in order to amplify design’s value and impact at scale.

Our DesignOps framework has 3 core areas:

1. How we work together: How teams organize and align around shared responsibilities, establish effective measures for collaboration, and enable employee development
2. How we get our work done: How teams use processes to achieve consistent design quality, establish repositories for knowledge sharing and efficiencies, and effectively prioritize projects
3. How our work creates impact: How teams measure design work, share and reward team success, and enable others — even those outside of the team — to learn and use design and research activities

Understanding DesignOps

If you’re totally new to DesignOps, or still trying to understand what it is, we recommend that you explore the following resources in order, from top to bottom.

DesignOps is also closely related to UX maturity — an organization’s desire and ability to successfully deliver user-centered design. It’s almost impossible reach a high stage of UX maturity without consistent methods, effective approaches to collaboration, and otherwise operationalizing UX. To better understand UX maturity and how DesignOps is critical for increasing it, start here:

• Overview of our 6-stage UX-maturity model: The 6 Levels of UX Maturity
• Detailed description of stage 3 (when DesignOps is often critical for moving forward): UX-Maturity Stage 3: Emergent

How We Work Together

The first area of DesignOps is concerned with how teams work together: How teams organize and align around shared responsibilities, establish effective measures for collaboration, and enable employee development.

These resources cover:

• UX-team reporting structures and team models
• Hiring and onboarding processes for UX team members
• UX meetings and collaboration

For more in-depth information on what a UX career looks like today, check out our free UX Careers report.

How We Get Work Done

The second area of DesignOps is concerned with how we get our work done: How teams use processes to achieve consistent design quality, establish repositories for knowledge sharing and efficiencies, and effectively prioritize projects

These resources cover:

• Centralized UX resources such as design systems and research repositories
• Methods for prioritizing projects, requests, and UX debt
• The UX design process and supporting research methods used throughout

The following study guides offer more in-depth collections of guidance for specific types of UX research and design methods:

• Qualitative Usability Testing: Study Guide
• Quantitative Research: Study Guide
• Design Thinking: Study Guide
• UX Mapping Methods: Study Guide
• Context Methods: Study Guide

We also offer full-day trainings on the following methods-related courses:

• User Research Methods: From Strategy to Requirements to Design
• User Interviews
• Discoveries: Building the Right Thing
• Generating Big Ideas with Design Thinking
• Personas: Turn User Data into User-Centered Design
• Journey Mapping to Understand Customer Needs
• Service Blueprinting

How Our Work Creates Impact

The third area of DesignOps is concerned with how our work creates impact: How teams measure design work, share and reward team success, and enable others — even those outside of the team — to learn and use design and research activities.

These resources cover:

• Tracking UX improvements over time
• Calculating the ROI of UX
• Communicating UX value to others

For more in-depth help on demonstrating UX value, check out our report and full-day course.

Report: UX Metrics and ROI

Course: Measuring UX and ROI

Related Study Guides

For a deeper dive into ResearchOps, a specialized sub-topic of DesignOps, see our ResearchOps Study Guide which will be published next month.