Design Operations: Results Summary
Overview
At Kape Technologies, I owned Design Operations for the entire design organization while managing several design teams (Growth, Visual, Product, and Motion) across multiple countries.
This page summarizes results from three Design Ops initiatives:
Fixing Design Intake and Reducing Tool Waste
Building a Design Playbook and QA Process
Leading Design Through Reorganization
Combined Results
Workflow Efficiency
Quality and Consistency
Team Health
Stakeholder Satisfaction
Cost Savings
How I Measured
Direct data:
Tool costs from invoices and license audits.
Jira reports:
Built custom Jira dashboards tracking time at each status, task handoffs, delays, average work time, QA frequency, and discipline-specific metrics.
Surveys:
Scheduled surveys to design ICs, managers, and stakeholders. Also used data from HR's eNPS surveys.
What I Built
Intake system:
Consolidated brand-specific Jira projects into one unified design project. Created ticket templates, automated triage, and briefing guides.
Design playbook:
Single source of truth with discipline-specific sections for UX, visual, product, motion, and branding. Linked to Figma templates and QA checklists.
QA process:
Parallel content and design tracks with automated task creation. Template-first workflow to fix issues once. Detailed checklists for web builders.
Operating model:
Ownership maps by stream. Weekly syncs. 1:1 mentoring for managers. Documentation in Confluence.
License management:
Audited all subscriptions, removed waste, renegotiated vendor contracts, established monthly reviews.