Front line experts who have ‘been there’ and ‘done it’ discuss how to use cross-functional collaboration and data-driven decision-making to ensure strategic DesignOps initiatives deliver measurable business impact.

Panellists will: 

• Share practical frameworks for bridging the gap between high-level vision and day-to-day operations. 
• Demonstrate how to leverage analytics and KPIs to validate success. 

The discussion will highlight how DesignOps can: 

Victoria Johnston shares the story behind the creation of a new design skills matrix for NatWest Group. A key initiative of the newly created Group Design Office, the shared framework would span diverse design teams across the bank – each with differing expectations, definitions of skill, and ways of working within a complex, fragmented organisation.

Severyn Harasevych, Chief Design Officer at Wantent, describes the transformational journey of converting developer-created technology into a fully realized AI product. How adopting a strategic approach ensures technological capabilities are used to create meaningful user experiences.

A detailed account of the process of translating raw technological potential into a purposeful product at the intersection of technology and design.

Including:

Accelerating Impact through Rapid Experimentation

How leveraging Rapid Experimentation within DesignOps unlocked the ability to accelerate business impact and created a culture of innovation. It reshaped team dynamics and enhanced the way team members perceived and articulated their own impact.

The key strategies used to go from ideas to impact.

Covering:

Step into the future of visual content marketing with agentic frameworks—an innovative approach powered by intelligent AI agents designed to revolutionize design operations from ideation to measurable and repeatable impact. By integrating advanced AI capabilities with strategic foresight, agentic frameworks optimize decision-making across the campaign lifecycle, setting a new benchmark for data-backed creative decision making.

The Resurrection of Design Systems

Anett Brodarics discusses how a rebranding initiative can be a transformative moment for design systems.

How strategic positioning during a company-wide rebrand can extend a design system's influence beyond product teams and create unprecedented organisational alignment and impact.

 How to leverage a high-visibility rebranding project to:

Sustaining Your Design System Well Beyond Implementation

Maintaining design system momentum after the initial launch is one of the most critical challenges facing design teams today. 

While many organisations successfully implement design systems, the journey from implementation to sustained value creation often proves demanding.

The challenge: to transform a design system from a one-time project into a lasting organisational asset.

What if design systems were treated as startups? 

Jon Reidy of T. Rowe Price explores building and scaling a design system using principles that drive successful businesses. 

By approaching design systems as a strategic service, teams can prioritise user needs, track critical metrics, and demonstrate tangible organisational value.

How treating design system development like a startup enables agile iteration, responsive user support and continuous improvement.