Put adoption inside team roadmaps
Designers still had product commitments while changing their workflow.
Agree a six-week migration with team leads so the transition had time, ownership, and a place in delivery planning.
Design operations · Organizational leadership
Wayfair · DesignOps Office
Making strong design repeatable.
Building the conditions for consistent product work: shared practices, a coherent toolchain, and a migration designed around the people who had to use it.
- My role
- Senior Manager, Product Design & Design Operations
- Scope
- 160+ person design organization · 40+ practice guides
- Period
- 2021–2023
01
The problem & constraints
As the design organization grew, teams operated with different tools, assumptions, and interaction patterns. Fragmentation made design-system access, collaboration, and consistent delivery harder.
In the toolchain migration, 60 of 180 designers were still using an Abstract–Sketch–InVision workflow. The old chain disconnected them from shared design resources and added cost and development effort. A new tool alone would not resolve the adoption barriers.
02
My contribution
I built the DesignOps function across hiring, onboarding, education, tooling, research operations, and governance. I led designers, managers, and partners while serving the wider product design organization.
For the migration, I researched why teams remained on the older toolchain and worked with their leads to make the transition part of their own delivery plans.
03
What informed the work
Adoption research established the practical barriers to changing tools. The migration had to fit existing roadmaps and give designers access to learning, support, and shared standards.
The wider practice work addressed duplicated effort and inconsistent assumptions across teams. Written guidance made methods and expectations accessible beyond individual conversations.
04
Key decisions
Teach the workflow, then make support accessible
Changing tools required confidence as well as access.
Combine a learning curriculum, open forums with internal Figma experts, and a week-long workshop.
Turn a migration into an enduring capability
New hires would otherwise encounter the same learning barriers later.
Write a migration playbook and work with Talent to incorporate it into onboarding; maintain practice guides for the broader organization.
05
What changed through the work
The migration paired a defined transition period with expert access and practical learning. The resulting playbook became part of onboarding, extending the benefit beyond the initial cohort.
Across the office, more than 40 method and practice guides supported consistent design processes, operations, education, and training.
06
Toolchain migration results
15%less time spent on design projects
30%decrease in development effort
$257Kannual savings from retiring the old toolchain
87%of designers reported greater craft confidence
The measures above belong to the toolchain migration. Separately, an internal B2B redesign reported 20% lower business expense and 15% greater service efficiency within a year. The office’s remit extended across tooling, research, education, and team development.
07
What I take forward
An operational change succeeds when people can incorporate it into real work. The combination of time, shared standards, and accessible support made the new practice sustainable.