From foundation to success: creation, organisation, monitoring and success of the Design Ops team
My Role
Design Lead
Team
Design Director
Design Managers
Main Skills
Design Operations (Design Ops), Team Leadership & People Development, Organisational Design, Cross-Functional Collaboration, UX Strategy & Design Systems, Stakeholder Management
The Basics
Getting to know the company
Escale is a B2B2C e-commerce company that offers products that control the entire lead acquisition and conversion journey—from the moment they are captured to their conversion into signed contracts in three main market units: Finance, Health Insurance, and Telecommunications.
The product ecosystem is divided into proprietary branding and white label, with design operating at various points of contact. From acquisition campaigns and landing pages, to e-commerce sites for product presentation and conversion journeys via chatbot, online or by telephone with operators.
For data protection reasons, some private information has been hidden from this case study. On the other hand, public information has been kept open.
Context
What was the Design team like?
At the beginning of the quarter, we received C-level approval to expand the Design team at that time. With the possibility of more hires, and with the team a little more overloaded than it should be, we decided to sit down and map out the team's current situation and where we needed more help.
This outline also helped us understand how the team was divided within the business units and which areas needed more people.
Challenge
How can we optimise our team to hire more people?
With a team that arrived in that format through the legacy of other leaders, and with designers working within other teams and not under our leadership, the main question we had was how we could bring these people into our team, replace the need for generalists so that they could work in positions where they felt more comfortable, and optimise our work to welcome new people.
Investigation
Designing the Squads' vision / understanding the challenges
After understanding the teams and how the Design people were spread across the company, without any criteria that made sense at that point in the business, we needed to reinvent ourselves and understand how it would be possible to bring those people into the team and allocate these professionals according to their skills and also the needs of the business.
To do this, we divided ourselves as a team and took responsibility for understanding the challenge of each business unit in a more strategic way and then breaking that strategy down into a more micro strategy, understanding the challenges of each Squad individually with their Product Manager and the Group Product Manager responsible for that Squad. So that in the end we had a design of our challenges.
Investigation
Overview of the Design team's performance and the actual division
From this last analysis, it became clear that the team was divided very unevenly and that there were other designers outside the team who were working in areas that did not actively need a designer, which also caused frustration among these professionals.
Our main goal here was to negotiate the transition of these professionals to our team and also to formalise a single design team capable of working across the company.
Discovery
Conquest of teams and formalisation of a single team
To ensure that our current idea of a team was functional and that we could have a unified Design team capable of meeting all the company's needs, we decided to get together and design a vision of how the team would operate, its main responsibilities, and what the main differences between these positions would be.
Through this formal presentation and our initial idea for an organisational chart, we were able to hold a meeting with the company's C-level executives, as well as with the leaders of each business unit, to convince them and obtain approval for this material. In the end, we were able to align and approve our team idea, which needed to be validated in two quarters to remain approved.
Discovery
Understanding the current team and their ambitions
With our initial idea approved, we decided to split up and talk individually with each of the company's designers. Our initial idea was to understand their current situation, their frustrations, what their ambitions were, and how they felt about creating a single Design team.
Discovery
Mapping positions and expertise
With the initial enthusiasm of the Designers to remain a unified team capable of acting strategically and not just visually, we decided to create a quantitative - and guided - way to measure the expertise and specialisations of our professionals.
The initial idea was to map the skills that all professionals - with the title of Product Designer - had and what their ambitions were. In addition, we cross-referenced this information with the results of a qualitative survey with the two main peers of the professionals and their current leader, aiming to have a visual map of each one.
Discovery
Alignment between business front and challenges with UX needs
With all this information designed and collected, it was my responsibility to design the first proposal that aligned the performance of the professionals we had with the needs of each Squad. The initial idea was to give a visual character to the new structure, but in a more anonymous way - without leaving the names of the Designers - and to approve this with the leaders of each squad and each vertical.
Solution
Creation of the Design Ops team under my leadership
With the new structure, I also had the opportunity to create – for the first time in the company – the Design Ops team, which would be responsible for ensuring sufficient inputs to facilitate the work of all Designers, acting at the forefront of innovation in the company with the Business team focusing on new products, and ensuring innovation in the medium and long term, without focusing on the daily activities of the Squads.
Solution
Merging the Content team with the Design Team
With the new structure, the company's Content team, which previously focused solely on marketing content, was successfully integrated into the Design team and professionalised as Content Designers through educational incentives provided by the company.
This changed the nature of the work, allowed for greater clarity in the management of freelancers and also enabled our team to be more strategic in our work.
Solution
Design Ladder
To ensure that we could positively evaluate each professional and that they also had a clear understanding of what they needed to do, what their responsibilities were, and what they would be held accountable for, all Lead Designers and Managers were responsible for writing their professionals' performance on an official Ladder, divided by area of expertise and level of seniority.
Solution
PDI with skills defined by level and design area
With the definitions of what the assessment points would be, as well as the responsibilities of each professional. We wanted to ensure that the semi-annual assessments were fair and based on their needs, those of the Design team, and those of the company.
That is why we also created an Individual Development Plan (IDP), where professionals and their leaders could monitor the evolution of their team's skills, base those skills on business needs, and create a quarterly development plan to help them get promoted and feel more motivated.
Results
Consolidated, valued and scalable team
After the first two quarters of the new teams' trial phase, we managed to raise the Design team's employee satisfaction rate from 50% to 95%, establishing our team before C-Level and the HR indicators that managers were held accountable for.
In addition, this became the official team formation, which was approved for a larger budget and the hiring of four more people in the following quarter.
Results
New Implementation Product
With the advancement and establishment of the Design Ops team, we were able to create a unique product — entirely designed by me and my team — that was responsible for implementing new customers into our current products, reducing the start-up time of an operation from 6 to 2 months.
This product became successful, and the company's CEO liked the result so much that he created an exclusive squad to continue managing the project and evolving the product.
Results
New Design System
With the division of labour between specific actions in the Squads and long-term, strategic actions, our team was also able to create a complete Design System. This Design System was shared across the entire company and constantly updated, encompassing all three business units, our different products, and also the Development team, giving autonomy to all areas.
Results
New Atomic Research system
With a UX Research team finally able to focus 80% of its work on current problems and 20% on innovation and future research, we were able to create a shared knowledge base across the company called ‘Atomic Research.’
Through this knowledge base, we were able to publish all the information we collected on the company's intranet, where all employees could easily discover research and insights already carried out, in addition to reducing the number of repeated searches to 0%
Results
Strategic action and Design visibility
The team also managed to focus on new business, working directly with the Business team on new commercial partners, ensuring a successful start and greater ROI for the company from the team and the new partnership.
[Under construction]
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My portfolio isn’t available on mobile just yet
For the best experience, please visit on a desktop.
As a little thank-you for your patience, here’s a cute dog gif