My Journey as Design Leader
I am a UX Strategic Design Leader and Design Ops with 13+ years of experience delivering customer-facing products and enterprise applications.
Navigating Efficiency and Alignment
The challenges of creating efficient design workflows and optimizing team productivity with 36 other designers. My day and other managers’ days were filled with ensuring that our design output aligned with business goals. I also faced the dragon of inefficiency and disarray in design processes. As our team grows, we need to improve the processes.
I played a pivotal role in driving the success of design initiatives at OLX Autos. I helped to create an efficient process and plan for strategic team meetings to align the team’s design operations with business goals.
Connecting People to Empathise
Every team works in their comfort zone, and it is very inefficient for the business. My quest was to
- Streamline design operations
- Align design operations with business goals and needs
- Work planning and budgeting
- Prioritize design initiatives
- Foster a culture of experimentation and learning
- Continuously refine design processes
- Empathize with different working styles
- Implement a continuous improvement process
- Gather feedback from the design team and stakeholders
- Identify areas for improvement and implement changes to enhance efficiency and effectiveness
- Ensure design output aligns with business goals
Enhancing Design Team Efficiency
With My Leadership Approach of
-
- Ownership: Embodying a sense of responsibility and accountability in every action.
- Bold and Big Thinking: Encouraging innovative and ambitious ideas.
- Smart Decision-Making: Prioritizing informed and strategic choices.
- Empowering the Team: Fostering a culture where every member feels valued and enabled to contribute meaningfully.
In response to the challenges faced, my approach emphasizes:
Streamlining Design Workflows: Concentrating on developing efficient workflows that support both team productivity and the alignment of design outcomes with business objectives.
Individual Task Allocation: Assigning specific operational tasks to each designer, focusing on initiative prioritization to leverage individual strengths and foster a sense of ownership.
Promoting a Learning Culture: Encouraging experimentation and ongoing learning within the team, allowing for iterative design enhancements and continual process refinement.
Respecting Diverse Working Styles: Acknowledging and accommodating the varying work methods of team members to enhance overall efficiency without compromising individual work styles.
Ongoing Process Improvement: Continuously seeking and integrating feedback from both the design team and stakeholders. This involves identifying areas for improvement and implementing necessary changes to boost both efficiency and effectiveness.
Time to WORK TOGETHER
Organise | Collaborate | Humanise
Time to WORK DONE
Standardise | Harmoise | Prioritise
Time to CREATE IMPACT
Measure | Socialise | Enable
Translating Vision into an Actionable Strategy
The impact of the solutions is to feel a sense of ownership while allocating individual tasks and being part of the change. By focusing on creating efficient design workflows and optimizing team productivity, Design Ops helped streamline processes and eliminate inefficiencies. The alignment of design output with business goals ensured that the design team delivered meaningful and impactful solutions.
With Design Ops in place, the team was able to prioritize work effectively, allocate resources efficiently, and align design strategies with the company’s objectives. This resulted in improved collaboration, faster decision-making, and enhanced overall productivity.
Overall, Design Ops played a pivotal role in driving the success of design initiatives at OLX Autos. By aligning design operations with business goals, Design Ops helped shape the future of the organization and demonstrated the power of design to make a real difference in the world.
Reflections on Remarkable Growth
As I reflect on this journey, I feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. It’s a narrative of overcoming challenges, inspiring a team, and leading design initiatives that shaped the future of OLX Autos. This story isn’t just about me; it’s about the power of design to make a real difference in the world.
