Design ops

Defining our design process, to reduce pain points and make it possible to scale

As out team scaled, different design processes, tools and approaches lead to inconsistent designs and wasted effort
Mapping the end to end desin process, clarifying roles, introducing standards, moving to figma and
Clearly documented processes, templates, a way to measure performance and series of meetings have shifted the way we work helping to be more consistent and work faster

Summary

Growing design team
Grew from 1 to 14 designers, adding new roles and team members with different approaches to the design process and lack of clarity on roles
Siloed project work
Designs documented research in different ways and places, wireframes varied massively, design files looked completely different. This combined made it hard to find the latest work or look back and find things

Multiple design tools
Created inconsistency, duplication and inefficiency across our design process.
No clear career development path
There was no clear definition between, junior, mid-weight and senior - leading to confusion
Difficult onboarding external design support
They struggled to get up to speed quickly with a lack of consistent process

Clear ways of working
Documented roles and responsibilities, steps, tools and cross-functional team process
Reduced number of design tools
From 3 to 1, simplifying our process at a reduced cost
Standard patterns
For the full product lifecycle, along side supporting documentation
Enhanced governance
Driving consistency, use of patterns and simpler auditing
New design team structure
Allowing closer cross-team collaboration, peered learning and development pathways
Agile methodology
Improving visibility of work and able to measure performance
shared assets
Research library, sandboxes, as-is design flows, design system, copy library, templates

Mapped existing end to end process
Identifying steps, overlaps, gaps, tools used
Gathered feedback
From team members (6 UX, 5UI, 2 Copywriters, Research lead, Accessibility lead) and key stakeholders to understand goals and pain point
Researched tooling and team structures
Studied approaches from other industries and design teams
Identify training and skills opportunities
What skills do the designer need to be high achievers
Drafted high level approach
Which was then iterated through with the team to refine and get by in
Created a strategic delivery plan
Which outlined the steps we would take to move us towards the end state
Delivered changes incrementally
Tracking through kanban board, iterating and evolving as necessary through retrospectives

Around 20% design efficiency
Across the end to end through less moving between tooling, looking for designs, etc. Which was measurable thanks to the sprint tracking
£120k in cost saving by consolidated tooling
Moving away from Sketch (designs) and Invision (Dev handover) to Figma - which was completed in 3 months by moving all of our designs and design system libraries
Improved team engagement scores
Thanks to some of there biggest pain points removed, clearly defined roles and career development paths
Better- cross functional design access
Other areas of the company could have open access to designs with the training team, marketing and risk able to self-serve screens when they needed them

Design systems