Why Research and Design Operations Matter

Join the London UX Community for an event dedicated to the impact of effective Research and Design Operations, exploring how this can transform your team’s design process and drive greater impact for your work and business. 

This event will dive into the strategies and best practices that Operations leaders teams use to plan, define, and manage their design processes, ensuring that creativity is amplified and results are tangible. Through a series of talks, we’ll explore how to set your teams up for success by cultivating the right culture, defining operational excellence, and highlighting the metrics that matter. Whether you're a practitioner or a leader, this event will aim to equip you with tools to maximise the value of your organisations design investment and scale design maturity with confidence. Don't miss this opportunity to connect with peers and industry leaders 

Event location
Skyscanner HQ - Level 5, Ilona Rose House
Manette St, London, W1D 4AL

Doors open
5:30PM

Agenda

Natasha Montgomery - Design & Research Operations Manager UX/UI - Wolters Kluwer
Operations with Design Thinking

Design Operations (DesignOps) and Research Operations (ResOps) are the backbone of efficient and scalable Discovery and Design teams. This talk will explore the key components of DesignOps, including team cohesion, workflow optimisation, tooling, and cross-functional collaboration. Design Ops is integral to implementing effective strategic initiatives that aim to improve the experience of designers and researchers in their teams.

This role supports teams to deliver high-quality research, discovery and design work, product consistency, efficacy, efficiency and most importantly deliver user value.

This talk will give an overview of Design Ops, how to apply design thinking to operations, foster a culture of continuous improvement and some actionable insights that can transform your design team’s productivity and maturity.

Amritpal Bhachu - Principal CX Consultant - UserTesting
Maximising Business Impact through UX & Design

Service requests to UX & Design Teams often come after product backlogs are defined. They are treated as a service delivery team as opposed to a strategic resource. The result - product outputs are riddled with experience compromises in order to hit delivery timelines, while also lacking true innovation in the process. Meanwhile, UX & Design Teams are left in an endless cycle of frustration - their value known within the organisation but impact being difficult to measure.

As budgets are shrinking and organisations look to operate with an even greater focus on being lean, it is now more important than ever that UX & Design Teams measure and communicate the impact of their efforts, in a way that the wider business understands.

In this talk I will:

• Dive into the challenges that I regularly hear from UX & Design Teams
• Discuss why speaking the language of the business is now a core required skill for UX & Design Teams
• Describe what a "North Star" approach could look like to help UX & Design Teams operate in a more efficient & effective manner, positively impacting your product delivery processes

Shannon Lu - Senior Research Operations Specialist - Ikea
Research operations: intro to strategies & relationships