Dialling Up the Joy, Turning Down the Pain: Design Ops at Spotify

Opening act 

My first 12 months of heading up design ops at Spotify is sort of full. It’s been a hell of a 12 months figuring what this self-discipline means and the way it works at a singular firm like ours. We have designers working throughout a number of places, for a number of audiences, throughout a number of platforms. And so as to add to that, Spotify values a great deal of autonomy and encourages groups to unravel issues in their very own manner, so we would have liked to tread flippantly at first. 

Here are some things we found out and needed to share with you—fellow design ops or design groups who’re pondering of forming a design ops operate. Note that we nonetheless have a protracted approach to go to ascertain our follow, so I’m keen to fulfill my friends to trade experiences and develop collectively. Reach out to me along with your questions and feedback by way of the hyperlink on the backside of this text.    

Disclaimer: You’ll discover fairly just a few references to music inside this text, we have a tendency to try this lots at Spotify. I hope you get pleasure from them and the Spotify playlist connected to this text. Appropriately, it is known as “Ode to Joy.”

Getting the stability proper

When I began working on this position, I rapidly realised being labelled with any type of “ops” title at a big firm leaves one vulnerable to being hearth hosed with all method of random requests, from “we ran out of ink cartridges!” to “I need a new Sketch license” or, our favorite at Spotify, “our tribe needs some cool swag, can you design it?”. Our staff needed to set up a course of rapidly; in any other case, we’d be pulled in a number of instructions and face a requirement overload. We’re a staff of six rockstar Design Program Managers (DPMs) who all labored collectively on this course of.

First, we created a mission assertion to outline our north star:

“Design ops aims to turn down the pain and dial up the joy for design at Spotify.”

Design ops acts as a quantity dial. We’re frequently working by way of the ache/pleasure, the intense/enjoyable, the rigour/silliness. Of course designers want all the intense stuff (corresponding to instruments, design programs, and dealing printers) to function successfully, however the human, joyful half is simply as vital. Having a supportive neighborhood, a design tradition, and steady inspiration from the world of design, artwork, and music can also be important to gasoline their artistic brains. 

Conducting the orchestra 

Our design ops staff helps a whole lot of designers in 5 places world wide. Not solely are we separated by oceans, designers additionally typically work solo in squads. We nonetheless imagine design works greatest inside cross-discipline groups to assist infuse all elements of the Spotify enterprise with user-centred pondering. 

But in a decentralised mannequin, designers can miss jamming with fellow designers and the robust cultural bonds {that a} central mannequin fosters. This is the place design ops performs a key position. We make connections occur by bringing designers collectively in some ways: internet hosting common socials, by way of our instruments, and although our skill-building packages. And this, women and gents, is how we created the three chords of Spotify’s design ops.  

All you want is three chords

These chords are the important thing to our rhythm. They present our work with a construction and a spotlight. They are the inspiration of design ops at Spotify:

• Culture & Community: means nurturing our inner design tradition and elevating our presence throughout Spotify and the exterior design neighborhood. We do that by way of selling common socials, establishing shared artistic areas—known as “design studios”—in all our places, and our shared rituals corresponding to our arty “First Thursdays”. 

• Learning & Inspiration: we host common coaching classes for designers to develop their abilities. This 12 months, for instance, we took the time to show them the fundamentals of Framer X and supplied a course in artistic management, amongst others. As properly as steady coaching, this chord contains us growing sturdy onboarding bootcamps for brand spanking new hires to discover ways to do design at Spotify.

• Tools & Systems: protected to say (after a 12 months of negotiating and dealing with IT and procurement) we now have a smaller and far more manageable toolset for design. From the wild west of individuals expensing their very own instruments, we’ve got consolidated licenses and entry by way of IT help. This initiative has drastically diminished the “how do I get access to…” requests and our licensing prices. A contained set makes it simpler for us to collaborate as all our designers are working in the identical instruments, following the identical playbooks. This chord additionally contains the work guiding our design rules and design system (our most valuable instrument of all). 

These chords are additionally inter-connected. For instance: a program to onboard new designers efficiently and rapidly (in Learning & Inspiration) can be depending on simplifying entry to our design toolset and connecting the brand new designer to our design system (Tools & Systems).

All our chords have a unique DPM in cost, relying on the place their ardour and strengths lie. This setting helps to supply focus for our staff and to comprise our work (keep in mind the firehose I discussed earlier?).

Rockstar manufacturing

Our design ops staff is superb. Each of our DPMs have robust backgrounds in undertaking administration and inventive manufacturing. We’re profitable as a result of, like the perfect producers, we will make sense out of complexity and assist orchestrate a staff in the direction of an answer.

We drive packages of labor that remedy issues and handle the wants of our designers, from kick-off all the way in which to supply. We deal with every design ops program like every massive manufacturing: we write a transparent transient, scope the work, construct a roadmap, set success measures, facilitate a staff by way of the method, and—better of all—ship. Not to say the satisfaction of marking them “done” in our design ops Trello board (see an instance beneath, we’re very happy with our use of labels).

Spotify is agile and famously autonomous. You must  be capable of cope properly with ambiguity to work right here as change occurs continually. We do this by breaking down our packages into smaller items of worth and commonly reviewing and prioritising our design ops backlog. Most of all, we stay versatile and open to alter. 

Our bandmates: working teams

While administrative and tactical work will all the time be a part of an operational staff, we additionally must preserve a strategic mindset, which is why we should be intently aligned with Spotify’s general management and design technique. 

Design management shapes and drives product design at Spotify, enabling our missions to create partaking, usable, and progressive merchandise whereas sustaining pleasure all through our course of and output. Each member of the design management staff units the expectations of design inside each their respective mission and collectively throughout the corporate. 

Design ops are additionally extremely reliant (and grateful!) on the bottom-up help from designers at Spotify. A key to our success is thru our working group (WG) mannequin, composed of groups of dedicated and motivated designers working with us delivering packages. Having these WGs means our designers are accountable and intently concerned in fixing issues for his or her self-discipline, which suggests extra adoption of the packages we offer.  

Examples of profitable WGs we’ve shaped and disbanded this 12 months embody our Design Days WG, who helped curate and produce our annual design convention; our Tools WG, who helped audit and streamline our design toolset; and our Editorial Board WG, who supply and evaluate content material for this very weblog.

Lead or backup singer?

Our staff’s stage of involvement in design initiatives can fluctuate relying on the scope and topic space. We’ve give you a helpful label system to assist information our stage of involvement. This helps set our coworker’s expectations on what sort of help we will provide and means they know the best way to work with us—and what we anticipate from them. Our three labels are:

• “Driving” – packages we 100% personal and are answerable for.

• “Supporting” – packages wherein a design lead or supervisor drives, and we assist execute and roll out to all of design. 

• “Looped In” – an initiative somebody exterior our staff drives, the place design ops offers light-touch help.

We are composing for tomorrow

My ultimate reflection, and the one I’m most happy with, is on how my staff’s ardour helps causes we care about by way of Spotify Design.

We hosted an occasion on design ethics in London known as ‘Designing for Tomorrow’, which impressed us to undertake the mindset and apply it to all the pieces we do. How does this work in follow? We think about ecological and moral views for each program wherein we’re engaged. We all the time purpose to work with small companies and up and coming creatives as companions; we rigorously think about our journey footprint; we host sustainable and accessible occasions; we help our native communities and discover methods to supply studying alternatives to underserved demographics and minority teams. 

These issues will finally encourage larger moral accountability, inclusion, and variety in our design follow.