Effective design project management all about understanding the problems your team is trying to solve, assessing the best plan of action, and then building a roadmap of how to forecast through a human-centered lens. This session will cover the importance of resource management, not just within the design team, but across all cross-functional groups and stakeholders working on a given product.

The right systems can empower designers to produce at higher levels by coordinating workflows, processes, and toolsets. DesignOps recognizes that there is a need for strong harmony between toolsets and the people who are using them. Join this session to better understand the need to be structured, yet flexible under oftentimes evolving and growing complexity with the right tools and systems.

When operating under a truly human-centered culture and mindset, design and research must be inextricably linked. However, within large organizations there are often many disparate operations-focused teams across research, product, design, and development, among others, that have more in common than one might think. Join this session as we uncover how to bridge the gap between DesignOps and ResearchOps, and how those teams might collaborate more effectively together.

When cultivating an environment of efficiency and consistency, data is key. When properly leveraged, that data is a goldmine of information for designers, whether those insights are pulled from surveying, usability testing, or evaluations. Developing a strong and transparent repository that can be easily accessed by everyone involved, from product, development, design, engineering, and more, is crucial to the DesignOps goal of standardizing the automation of information through proper tooling and technology.

Many enterprises are investing heavily in design systems as a means to produce better more consistent digital experiences, faster and cheaper. However, there are many pitfalls that can doom a design system, leading to poor adoption, unnecessary rework, and a lack of true efficiency.

Our speaker will share a few of the crucial mistakes he and his design systems teams have made at companies like Oracle, UKG, and CVS Health, and how they corrected those mistakes. He will also share a few things TO DO to make for a truly scalable, enterprise-ready design system.

Rich Gunther

Lead Director, Design Systems
CVS Health

See Bio

Building and maintaining a design system can be time consuming and requires sufficient resources from the organization. Smaller organizations with smaller teams and projects may not need to integrate a design system because communication and tools are streamlined more easily. For larger organizations with several teams collaborating on one project, creating a design system can be a useful way to increase accessibility and streamline all aspects of the design process.

Join this session to understand if building a design system is a worthwhile investment for your company and better comprehend management of a design system at scale, especially as it relates to the stakeholders who will also be leveraging this system. If they aren't bought into it, no lasting success will come.

You've learned the ins-and-outs of Design Operations: from people, culture, and collaboration, hiring, onboarding, training, and career progression, and leveraging tools, systems, and processes at scale. However, which pieces are going to be most beneficial to your unique team will vary depending on size, growth potential, and general design maturity.

Join this session to start building your comprehensive DesignOps business case, how to educate leadership on its value, and how to start executing in a meaningful way.