What is DesignOps?

Also known as Design Operations, these are practices aimed at optimizing design processes, tools, and workflows. A simple example of a DesignOps practice is creating a folder structure for all the files that designers use daily.

You might think:

‍Isn't it a bit silly to spend time fixing a "problem" that doesn't exist? Maybe my files aren't sorted by date, tasks, or others, but my colleagues and I can manage. Besides, we have a lot of files, and sorting them would take a lot of time.

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Yes, cleaning up the mess takes time, but if you look at it from the perspective of several years, you might notice a few issues with putting off this problem:

1. A time will come when you start losing track of various projects that you need to revisit from years ago.

2. Onboarding a new designer. A new person on the team might have a hard time finding their way around your folders, which are only connected by your mental shortcuts.

3. Even if you think you remember where all the folders are, finding them usually takes more time than finding a folder in a structured map of your drive or cloud.

4. Give your brain a rest - Designing requires a lot of mental energy, so why waste it on pointless file searching?

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What does DesignOps look like at Rocksoft?

At Rocksoft, we focus on areas where we see the greatest potential or need. In this article, I will try to describe some of the most important things we have managed to implement.

Maintaining folder structure

As I mentioned earlier, I believe that keeping order in files gives a huge advantage in working with them. I have often experienced working with folders of people who thought this aspect of a designer's job wasn't important. If most of your work time is spent searching for files, can you call it designing, or is it more like treasure hunting?

Automating social media posts

As Rocksoft, we wanted to reduce our social media budget without reducing the number of posts on our profile. We achieved this by designing a simple system that uses Midjourney as a photo generator and Figma as a place for post templates, cutting time by about 50%. The idea and implementation were inspired by this video.

Creating a hub for designers

Based on various surveys and questions asked to different people in the team, it turned out that not every folder and document is easily accessible to those who might need it. To solve this problem, we came up with the idea of creating a place where a team member can find not only files but also links to Figma files and documents, information about internal projects, and even some information about the skills of individual team members.

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How to implement DesignOps in your team?

DesignOps is still a relatively fresh and broad concept, which can cause misunderstandings and confusion around the topic. However, the main goal of using DesignOps is to identify gaps or mistakes in different aspects of design. I recommend starting by reading this article.

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