Market Commentary Insights: Research & Redesign
Research | Conversational Design | Prototyping
Enhancing a generative AI chat bot experience to automate the transcription of the daily market and wealth strategy calls
Overview
Target User Group
1000+ BNY Wealth Management Team
Focus Group: West Coast Wealth Manangers
Timeline
April - August 2024
My Role
User Experience/Product Designer
Support: BNY Wealth Tech Design Team Manager
Tools
Figma, FigJam, and Maze
“Hey Design Team? It’s me…Product”
Background
The BNY West Coast Wealth Managers
“For DesignOps, we still need to have one lead person to create timeline, and follow up on tasks to reach a better level on the scoping and priorities.”
“There are [still] confusions around roles within the team, particularly regarding who is responsible for finalizing the UX research metrics, Design Ops, and UX Design Review.”
- Elahe B. Senior Product Designer
It had become clear after reading through more sticky notes that our team was looking for order in the chaos of the random pings from product owners and jotting down notes from the last user interview. We had managed to establish systems that assisted with project scoping and prioritization (a process I established) and research intake, but struggled to find a balance with visibility and management of operation-focused initiatives.
Beyond order, members were also looking for time to just be designers! Undisturbed time for the team to come together to host creativity and knowledge sharing sessions around design best practices. My manager reiterated the concern for an operations practice, and with already leading operations initiatives, decided to take on this challenge. This term “Design Ops” was becoming more than just a workflow and I saw it more as a way to directly help my team - by solving the problems they didn’t have time to focus on.
The Problem
Our team had internal pain points that needed some attention and TLC, but we weren’t versed in what resources it would take to stand up and lead a Design Operations practice. The operations practice also isn’t a one fits all; to truly be effective, the principles of the practice would need to support our team’s goals and current mission towards maturity.
Challenge
A streamlined, and effective, design operations practice that could be stood up in a couple weeks before the next quarterly project planning period.
Research
A Snippet of My DesignOps Brain Dump FigJam
Team Hierarchy
My manager and I reviewed the pillar break down to better assign the team to their new roles. We also identified the following roles:
Design Operations Coordinator
Design Operations Pillar Lead
Design Operations Practitioner
The Coordinator, myself, and would facilitate the organization, prioritization, and progression on the operations initiatives with the Pillar Leads. They would then ideate, and execute on the agreed upon initiatives with the DesignOps Practitioners, support members to help meet project milestones. The Pillar Roles were specifically filled with members who 1) expressed interest in leading operations projects and 2) could maintain capacity to lead for the last half of the year.
Milestones + Communication
While this workflow created an efficient cycle between the division and management of work, it still needed to solve for the transparency of impact to the team. I planned for a DesignOps team showcase in December to give us a target end point, and to recognize the teams’ efforts. From there, I planned weekly pillar lead working sessions for progress check ins and bi-weekly meetings with our manager to align project milestones to upcoming business initiatives.
Pillar Responsibilities
Among other design teams, there was a common practice of using the terms “process”, “practice”, and “people/culture” to define operations projects. Since my main goal was to avoid unnecessary confusion, I planned our team’s 9 on going internal projects and rituals (i.e., design critiques) around the same pillar names.
Process: Business Operations and Enhancements
Practice: Streamlining Workflows, Skill Definition
People: Social Activities, Team Recognition
Creating a Practice: What Does the Team Need?
My research methods in this initiative were a mix of internal and external feedback to understand the following:
What key craft and culture activities did the team want to explore?
What processes could required future improvement?
What important concepts and principles make up design operations practices?
I initially researched basic concepts of an operations team structure, pillars, and metric tracking from sources like The Neilson/Norman Group and YouTube. Other designers conceptualized their practices within their working environments, giving a good point of comparison on what my team might need within the operations structure. I also learned about the different design operations roles within small to large design teams, and common terms used to break up the work into principles/pillars (i.e., practice, process, culture, people). While teaching myself, I was also working to build up my knowledge to better educate the team (less confusion would hopefully mean easier adoption).
My next step was to go back and talk to the team. The idea of the operations practice was brought up, but what did they actually want from out of it? From this revision, there were three types of activities the team proposed:
Process Improvement
Workflows that establish a standard in our design process like platform library documentation and guidelines.
Crafting/Learning Sessions
Team practicing skills in Figma Slides, learning about new trends like Design Tokens, and defining important parts of our design process like UX Documentation
Social Opportunities
Team gatherings outside of work and/or volunteering through work benefits
Framing the Practice: How Will the Team Work Together?
After gathering these insights, I spared my eyes the extra article and started to draft a structure based around establishing the pillar responsibilities, team hierarch , and milestones + communications.
Problem Statement
How could we keep track of business initiatives we needed to deliver, ensuring we meet product expectations, while also focusing on initiatives aimed at building the team’s craft, culture, and processes?
Designing
DesignOps Practice Goals
Organized Process
Create a structured approach for the design team to ideate, plan, and execute internal projects.
Clear Roles & Responsibilities
Define specific roles and responsibilities for team members involved in the project planning and execution.
Milestones + Communication
Schedule check ins bi-monthly and quarterly for strategizing and coordinating DesignOps initiatives
Prioritization
Ensure internal projects are prioritized against other design deliverables for product and engineering teams.
Pillars Roles & Responsibilities
-
People Pillar Lead
Social Activities
Team recognition
External Community Events
Onboarding/Offboarding
Learning Experiences
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Practice Pillar Lead
Tools/Platforms
Design Trends
Team Templates
Team Rituals
Team Workflows
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Process Pillar Lead
Data Governance + Metrics
Design Library Governance
Career Path
Role Definition + Skill Matrix
Testing the Pilot
Task Tracking: Miro & Teams
I complied the framework details and shared them with the team in an Figma Slide presentation to express the high level details and team support. My proposal received positive feedback (aka no one had questions) so I began setting up the required meetings and templates for the working sessions.
Luckily, my teammates were ready to get started! We ended up drafting 6 total initiatives that would be recorded, tracked and measured for the last three and half months of the year. We continued to use Microsoft Teams for task tracking and, additionally, used Miro for quarterly planning meetings.
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Miro: Quarterly Project Planning Template
The Design Team Manager, DesignOps Coordinator, and Pillar Leads review quarterly projects from the scheduled project prioritization sessions and retrospect workshops. High level project details are captured to outline priority, dates, and phases.
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Microsoft Teams: Planner Kanban DashBoard
Pillar Leads create tasks for quarterly projects, assign based on supported needed, and align on various project tasks with DesignOps Practitioners.
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Mircosoft Teams: Planner Project Task Card
Design Ops Practitioners support pillar initiatives and keep track of expected deliverables through a DesignOps Hub channel.
Next Steps & Key Take Aways
Q3 Team Retro Feedback
Many of teammates expressed their appreciation of the order and flexibility offered for members to support each other internally through the practice. They also mentioned how the practice kept the projects afloat as they were handling an urgent business initiative and upcoming operational changes.
We could highlight many aspects of the practice that proved effective while leaving room for improvement with our task tracking methods since it didn’t reach a point of adoption in our team’s task-checking routine.
Aside from the ideas in our retro FigJam, the DesignOps Pillar Leads and I sent out a team survey to capture any final feedback on the practice.
Note: This was a difficult group of data for us to find insights since we were also evaluating our own comments.
Wealth Tech Design Team Q3 Retro FigJam
Team Survey Feedback
“Overall, the DesignOps processes have greatly enhanced our efficiency, consistency, and collaboration, making our design workflow more effective and streamlined. The team's dedication and hard work have truly made a positive impact.”
Elahe B., Senior Product Designer
Our Showcase
We used a feedback survey and the REACH evaluation method to provide the team insights on their impact through the DesignOps Practice. We were able to truly reflect on our growth in crafting, design knowledge and our supportive culture; to say it was meaningful was an understatement.
