Podcast: Meredith Black, Former Head of Design Ops @ Pinterest — What is Design Ops? And Why You Need It To Scale
Explore Design Ops with expert Meredith Black: Pinterest ex-Head of Design Operations, and founder of DesignOps Assembly. Gain insights on team expansion, overcoming challenges, and scaling functions successfully in our latest episode!
Guest: Meredith Black, Former Head of Design Ops @ Pinterest
Host: Adam Perlis, CEO at Academy UX
In this episode, we sit down with Meredith Black, former Head of Design Operations at Pinterest, Founder of DesignOps Assembly and DesignOps Consultant. As a co-author of definitive books in this space, Meredith has become an authoritative figure in the Design Ops community. Together, we'll delve deep into the crucial role of Design Ops in successfully expanding a design team, confront the common challenges, and understand the ideal time to bring on board a Design Ops manager and subsequently scale the function.
Academy
Links mentioned in the episode:
Adam Perlis
Are you seeking top Design Ops talent or aspiring to build a successful career in the field? Academy bridges the gap between premier clients and industry professionals through expert Design Ops staffing and recruiting services. Check us out a https://academyux.com.
Meredith Black is a design operations consultant and the founder of DesignOps Assembly, the largest community for design operations practitioners. She previously served as Head of Design Operations at Pinterest and did early DesignOps work at Facebook — where she helped define the discipline for the industry — and at Hot Studio and IDEO before that. She is a co-author of the DesignOps Handbook.
Key Takeaways
- Meredith's plain-English definition: 'DesignOps is everything but design on a design team.' Career ladders, hiring, onboarding, tooling, process, team rituals — all the work that makes designers able to design.
- The strongest signal that you need DesignOps is when your design leader is drowning — doing onboarding, hiring, career ladders, and process work instead of the creative leadership they were hired for.
- Meredith's controversial take: if you have headcount for a designer but no headcount for a DesignOps person, consider swapping. When designers are spending five of every eight hours on operational work, you're paying designers to not design — and that's a worse deal for the business than simply hiring DesignOps directly.
- DesignOps shouldn't exist just to add process. Every new process must help designers get better at their craft; process-for-process's-sake is the fastest way to make designers hate their own function.
- Meredith founded DesignOps Assembly with Elisa Shell in 2015 — born from a mutual realization that they were doing the exact same work at different companies and constantly reinventing the wheel. The community is now one of the most-used resources in the field.
- The right first DesignOps hire depends entirely on the company's current state: if design is already respected, hire an evangelist and strategic partner; if it's not, hire someone more executional to free up the design leader's time.
- Most design leaders only get permission to hire DesignOps after they've been suffering long enough to prove the case. Meredith advocates doing that budget math proactively — before the design leader burns out or the team's quality dips.
- The best first question before hiring DesignOps is brutally simple: 'what percentage of your designers' time is being spent on non-design work?' If the number is high enough, the business case writes itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
› What is DesignOps?
Meredith Black's definition: 'DesignOps is everything but design on a design team.' That includes hiring, onboarding, career ladders, professional development, tooling, workflow, budget, rituals, vendor management, and the countless operational workstreams that make it possible for designers to actually design. The discipline formalized at Facebook in the early-to-mid 2010s and exploded at Pinterest, where Meredith was Head of DesignOps.
› When does a design team need DesignOps?
Meredith's heuristic is when the design leader is drowning — when they're spending so much time on hiring decisions, career ladders, onboarding, or process that they can't do the creative leadership work they were hired for. She acknowledges it's situational, but if any of those workstreams are chronically delayed, the team is already past the point of needing help.
› Should I hire a DesignOps person or another designer?
Meredith's direct answer: if your designers are spending a huge chunk of their time on non-design work, you're already paying designers to do operations — which is a worse deal for the business than simply hiring a DesignOps person. If head count is tight and you can only have one, consider swapping the planned designer hire for a DesignOps hire so the rest of the team can work at full capacity.
› What should the first DesignOps hire look like?
It depends on the state of design at the company. If design is already respected, your first DesignOps hire should be a strategic partner and evangelist — someone who will build ladders, systems, and influence. If design is not yet respected, lean more executional at first so the design leader gets immediate relief and can focus on raising the discipline's profile.
› What is DesignOps Assembly?
DesignOps Assembly is the community Meredith co-founded with Elisa Shell in 2015 after they realized they were doing the exact same DesignOps work at different companies and constantly reinventing the wheel. It's now one of the most widely-used resources in the field — a place for practitioners to share templates, processes, job listings, and in-person and virtual events.
› What's Meredith Black's career background?
IDEO → Hot Studio → Facebook → Pinterest (Head of DesignOps) → independent consultant and founder of DesignOps Assembly. She has never held the title 'designer,' but has spent her entire career surrounded by designers, helping them do their best work through operational leadership.
› How should you avoid over-engineering process?
Meredith's rule is simple: process only exists to help designers do better work. If a process isn't visibly making designers better at their craft, kill it. She warns against putting process in place 'just to keep it there' — that's what makes DesignOps feel like bureaucracy instead of the leverage it's supposed to be.
› How do you make the business case for DesignOps to an executive team?
Meredith's angle: run the math on how much non-design work your designers are already doing. Count the hours per week spent on hiring, onboarding, process, tooling, and meetings. Convert that into fully-loaded designer cost. Compare against the cost of a DesignOps role. The number usually writes the business case by itself.
Full Transcript
› Read the full conversation transcript
com and there's a big button that says join us and you can click that button and we will send you an invite within 24 to 48 hours again we have volunteers inviting everybody into the org so it might take a little bit of time but don't worry we're on it we'll get you in and yeah I mean come explore there's always conversations happening about a million different things on any given day it's it's a pretty active slack channel I'm quite surprised at how active it is I'm like wait a minute do does everybody work or are they just on the slack Town but you know all of the conversations are incredibly productive and you know again people are just there willing to share information about what they've learned what they've gone through or how to you know better somebody else's day or what's going on and you know and in certain situations so if you're looking for education and a support group definitely join us awesome and if people want to follow along with you and you know any of the things that you're up to where's the best place to kind of follow probably LinkedIn to be honest right now that's probably the easiest way I'm not being on to this social media with myself personally just because I don't have the bandwidth but I'm pretty active on LinkedIn so I think that's probably the best the best place to get me cool awesome yeah you know and one thing I wanted to mention you know because we're on the same subject you know at Academy we've been working with a lot of design Ops professionals helping advise them about their candidacy you know how to stand out as a design Ops professional or even make a transition you know in your career to a design Ops management type of role and we actually produced a guide called the design Ops portfolio guide which a lot of design professionals don't realize that they actually could actually build a portfolio and tell their story in a more visual way and also tell their story of leadership because a lot of design Ops professionals are actually leaders within a team even if they don't always have a direct report that is you know coming into them so a lot of great materials on our blog which we'll definitely put into the show notes but Meredith I just wanted to thank you so much for taking the time with us today was wonderful to hear all about you know design Ops the growing field and also your career and thoughtful advice for you know the people that are listening to this podcast thank you so much for having me again if anybody's got any questions feel free to reach out
