Matt Gottschalk and Ben Franck, both UX & DesignOps Managers at Centrica, will share the journey they have been on since setting up their DesignOps function at the beginning of 2018. They will discuss the types of problems that come with managing and supporting a de-centralised design team of 40+ User Experience designers, how they defined the role and how having a design operations function enabled them to streamline processes and drive efficiency and consistency.
2. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Matt Gottschalk
Makers turned Leaders
10+ years design industry
Ben Franck
15+ years design industry
TUI Travel, AXA Insurance,
British Gas, Centrica
lastminute.com, Ogilvy,
British Gas, Centrica
3. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Centrica
Energy and Services company: UK, Ireland & North America
Focus areas:
•Energy Supply
•Home Services
•Connected Homes
•Distributed Energy & Power
•Energy Marketing
•Trading
Over 25 Million customer accounts and £28 Billion annual revenue
5. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
2016 2017 2018 2019
7
Digital product teams
10
Digital product teams
24
Digital product teams
26
Digital product teams
Digital transformation
Scaling at speed
7. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Yesterday
Where were we?
2016 - 2017
Today Tomorrow
2019 - onwards
Small de-centralised team
of 15 designers in 1 office
8. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Community
Family feel
Small team of 15 designers distributed
across 7-10 digital product teams
Generalist designers
Focus on broad spectrum designers owning
a product’s digital experience
Easy to run design group
Limited onboarding and recruitment needs
due to size and stability of the team
Yesterday.
9. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Leadership
One Leader
Head of Design operating as sole strategic
and tactical role
Senior Makers
4 senior designers focused on designing
within product teams
Yesterday.
10. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Design maturity
Maturing company
Design has moved from visual finesse to
identifying and solving customer needs
Making and educating
Innovation is slowed down due to constant
justification of design methods
Yesterday.
STEP 1
NON-DESIGN
STEP 2
DESIGN AS
FORM-GIVING
STEP 3
DESIGN AS
PROCESS
STEP 4
DESIGN AS
STRATEGY
Limited reach
Only 1 design leader promoting user centred
design practises outside the digital landscape
11. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Tooling
Methods and templates
Small design team operating with little
governance and ownership
Design tools
No standard tooling resulted in inefficiency
and inconsistency
Yesterday.
INCONSISTENT
The absence of a design system
STEP 1
STATIC
A static PDF of your brand guidelines
STEP 2
MANUAL
The pattern library has code snippets
STEP 3
AUTOMATIC
The pattern library is a part of your development process
STEP 4
GOVERNED
The pattern library process is built in to your organisation
STEP 5
14. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Yesterday
Where we are today…
2016 - 2017
Today Tomorrow
2019 - onwards
Big de-centralised team
of 45 designers based across 5 offices
15. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Group Function Digital Transformation
+ =
Design team covering multiple
brands across different locations
Explosive growth transforming
our traditional organisations
Scaling at Speed
Designers
40+
16. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
How might we…
Effectively operate a design
team that is now three times
as big as it was 6 months
ago?
Optimise and augment our
existing tools and methods to
allow designers to focus on
creativity and innovation?
Champion collaboration
inside and outside the team
to be as efficient as possible?
Communicate the value of
investment in design across
the company and help to
increase design maturity
and reach within the
organisation?
Challenges.
18. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
• Hiring
• Supervising
• Training employees
• Monitoring and optimising existing processes
• Analysing system effectiveness
• Creating strategies for improving productivity and efficiency
Customer Operations
Does it compare?
19. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
“Design Operations focuses
on the health of the practice,
the people, and the projects.”
Kristin Skinner:
Kristin Skinner
Author of Org Design for Design Orgs;
Building and managing in-house teams
20. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
“DesignOps is the key to scaling digital product design teams with
more efficiency. As companies mature and invest in design, they need
to operationalise workflow, hiring, alignment between teams, and
more so designers can focus on design work while someone else
takes care of the rest.”
DesignBetter.Co - The DesignOps Handbook
21. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Shaping DesignOps for Centrica
Capture
List existing activities and
explore opportunities
Sort
Identify and map key
areas of focus
#DesignOps
Label
Define our DesignOps pillars and
establish strategic and tactical goals
22. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Shaping DesignOps for Centrica
Capture
List existing activities and
explore opportunities
Sort
Identify and map key
areas of focus
#DesignOps
Label
Define our DesignOps pillars and
establish strategic and tactical goals
23. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Our 4 DesignOps Pillars
Effectively operate a design
team that is now three times
as big as it was 6 months
ago?
Optimise and augment our
existing tools and methods to
allow designers to focus on
creativity and innovation?
Champion collaboration
inside and outside the team
to be as efficient as possible?
Communicate the value of
investment in design across
the company and help to
increase design maturity
and reach within the
organisation?
Shaping DesignOps for Centrica
24. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Our 4 DesignOps Pillars
Effectively operate a design
team that is now three times
as big as it was 6 months
ago?
Optimise and augment our
existing tools and methods to
allow designers to focus on
creativity and innovation?
Champion collaboration
inside and outside the team
to be as efficient as possible?
Communicate the value of
investment in design across
the company and help to
increase design maturity
and reach within the
organisation?
Shaping DesignOps for Centrica
People Design Toolkit Collaboration Design Value
25. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
By focusing on these 4 pillars, our DesignOps team
works on setting up and maintaining a forward
thinking and user centred environment for designers
to focus on what really matters:
Crafting innovative solutions for our customers.
27. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
People
Established relationships with Product
Owners to ensure continued quality of work
What did we do? What is the outcome?
Recruitment - We put product teams needs at
the heart of our designer recruitment
28. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
People
Established relationships with Product
Owners to ensure continued quality of work
What did we do? What is the outcome?
Created a digital designer playbook for both
existing team and new joiners
Recruitment - We put product teams needs at
the heart of our designer recruitment
Onboarding - We mapped the joining experience
and gathered insights and identified opportunities
29. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
People
Recruitment - We put product teams needs at
the heart of our designer recruitment
Established relationships with Product
Owners to ensure continued quality of work
What did we do? What is the outcome?
Onboarding - We mapped the joining experience
and gathered insights and identified opportunities
Created a digital designer playbook for both
existing team and new joiners
Engagement - We ran engagement surveys to
assess the impact of Design Operations on our team
Identified successes and refined our DesignOps
roadmap based on designer needs
30. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Optimise and augment our existing tools and
methods to allow designers to focus on
creativity and innovation
Design Toolkit
31. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Design Toolkit
We created service manuals and
standardised our core deliverable templates
Our designers practises are now aligned and
consistent across the whole team
What did we do? What is the outcome?
32. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
We created service manuals and
standardised our core deliverable templates
Our designers practises are now aligned and
consistent across the whole team
What did we do? What is the outcome?
We created a version controlled centralised
Sketch component library
Increased consistency and efficiency in the
design process
Design Toolkit
33. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Our designers practises are now aligned and
consistent across the whole team
What did we do? What is the outcome?
Increased consistency and efficiency in the
design process
We setup a dedicated product team to
demonstrate the value of a design system
Designers and developers using and contributing
to a centralised and governed library
Design Toolkit
We created service manuals and
standardised our core deliverable templates
We created a version controlled centralised
Sketch component library
35. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
What did we do? What is the outcome?
Collaboration
We ran a design week, bringing together
designers from across our organisation
Improved collaboration and engagement
within the team
36. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
We ran a design week, bringing together
designers from across our organisation
Improved collaboration and engagement
within the team
What did we do? What is the outcome?
We setup weekly open design critique
sessions
Increased visibility of work in progress
across the team
Collaboration
37. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
What did we do? What is the outcome?
We focused on improving the openness and
transparency of the existing team culture
Designers feel safer giving/receiving feedback
enabling more exploration and experimentation
We ran a design week, bringing together
designers from across our organisation
Improved collaboration and engagement
within the team
We setup weekly open design critique
sessions
Increased visibility of work in progress
across the team
Collaboration
38. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Communicate the value of investment in
design across the company and help to
increase design maturity and reach within the
organisation
Design Value
39. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Established relationships with business units
outside of digital
Increased trust and understanding of our
work and capabilities
What did we do? What is the outcome?
Design Value
40. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Established relationships with business units
outside of digital
Increased trust and understanding of our
work and capabilities
What did we do? What is the outcome?
Advocating for the value of design input
earlier in the product lifecycle
Design is moving away from being solely a
delivery function
Design Value
41. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Established relationships with business units
outside of digital
Increased trust and understanding of our
work and capabilities
What did we do? What is the outcome?
Advocating for the value of design input
earlier in the product lifecycle
Design is moving away from being solely a
delivery function
We demonstrated and presented the impact
of Design Operations
Provide consultancy to other departments
Design Value
44. @mgottschalk30 @PtitBenDesignOps at Centrica
Kristin Skinner:
Setting up a DesignOps
function has and will continue
to enable our designers to
focus on designing.
Outcome.
