Within a product organization, a number of workflow and environmental factors affect the effectiveness and impact of design work. Design operations manages aspects of culture and process, allowing designers to focus on execution while expanding the range of design's scope.
Design operations tackles common product challenges like;
- interface consistency
- clarifying specification
- user testing
- developer handoffs
It addresses these factors by managing and communicating aspects of the design workflow like;
- defining scope
- managing tasks
- reporting status
- vetting deliverables
Define a canvas that captures information prior to kickoff.
- Participants: People involved in the project including stakeholders and decision makers
- Goals: How success is defined for the project.
- User Segments: Main groups targeted with this project, using behavioral variables and personas where possible.
- Value Proposition: A story outlining what users and participants will gain from a successful project launch.
- Deliverables: A list of artifacts to be produced.
- Milestones: Key dates, events and project timeline.
- Scope: A list of features, functions and outcomes including and not included in this project release.
- Specifications: Data, content and assets required for the project scope.
Gather artifacts to inform the project goals and users.
- Survey: Write form to capture insights or collect existing surveys.
- Empathy Map: Broadly define user segments with inferential data.
- Moodboard: Collect varied existing approaches visually.
- Competitive Landscape: Compare features and benefits across products.
Build a profile of your user.
- Interviews: Recruit and use a script to interview participants.
- Persona Demographic: Suggest an outline of your user segments.
- Behavioral Variables: Map insights to behavioral gradients.
- Gains & Pains: Catalog observed or intuited user insights for each segment.
- Jobs to be Done: List the jobs they need to perform to move past pains.
Workshop possibilities within the project domain.
- Storyboarding:
- Journey Map:
- Rapid Paper Prototyping:
Strategies to ship projects.
- Project Release Statement:
- User Story Map:
- Release Prioritization
- Prioritization Matrix:
Methods to visualize ideas with increasing fidelity.
- Wireflow:
- Wireframe:
- Clickable Prototype:
- Microinteractions:
- Design System Mapping:
Determine build sequence and identify reusability.
- Value-Effort Matrix:
- Build Prioritization:
- Component Library:
Probe developing project for improvements.
- Prototype Testing:
- Usability Study:
- Software Testing: