Coordinated collaboration: a Service Design & DesignOps love story
Summary
On paper, UX reviews are a no-brainer. Teams want feedback. Leaders want quality. Experts are willing to help. So why wasn’t it working? What seemed like a simple ask—“let’s offer UX reviews to teams”—quickly exposed a mess of invisible complexity: unclear ownership, inconsistent experiences, too many ad hoc requests, and burned-out senior designers doing unrecognized labor. There was so much willingness to help and share knowledge, but not enough of a system or support to scale. So we decided to design it. This is the case study of how we created an internal UX Review service, not just a process. Co-led by service design and design ops, we mapped the end-to-end journey—from request intake to reviewer matching to documentation and follow-up. We built shared definitions of success. We tackled coordination debt. And we designed for the system, not just the moment so we considered who participates, who decides, who benefits, and who sustains it. The project became a love story between two disciplines (Service Design and DesignOps), between intention and implementation to navigate the ambiguous intersection of what the business needs, what designers say they want, and what actually helps everyone do better work. More than that, it challenged us to apply our design craft to ourselves. What does it mean to design services for designers? How do we balance flexibility and fairness in a knowledge org? And how do we turn a “nice to have” into a performance driver?
Key Insights
-
•
Intentional, structured collaboration outperforms random or ad hoc teamwork in globally distributed UX teams.
-
•
Creating shared language and purpose, such as through a naming workshop, builds strong alignment beyond task-level agreement.
-
•
Forming a dedicated collaboration squad with explicit agreements on logistics, tools, and interpersonal support strengthens team performance.
-
•
Coordinated collaboration includes recognizing distinct but complementary roles, enabling each partner to do their best work while supporting the other.
-
•
Small feedback loops and check-ins sustain momentum and build collaboration muscle memory over time.
-
•
Increasing coordination can triple project impact from 2-3 to 10-11 projects per quarter with less individual effort.
-
•
Service design and design ops partnership drives service innovation and operational sustainability together.
-
•
Collaboration rituals and structured sessions replace reliance on chance hallway conversations, fostering alignment.
-
•
Focusing on learning and adaptive capacity within teams enhances UX knowledge sharing and continuous improvement.
-
•
Looking beyond traditional roles, operational or program managers can fulfill some design ops coordination functions in organizations lacking dedicated roles.
Notable Quotes
"Each of us is a superhero managing our own work and advocating for design best practices in silos."
"Coordinated collaboration is about designing our efforts with purpose to sustain peak performance conditions."
"Naming was nothing about the name; it was about creating alignment and clarity of purpose."
"Once collaboration loops start compounding, they become muscle memory and the structure supports our work."
"You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems."
"Small feedback comments like, 'Hey, how’s that going?' keep the momentum alive in addition to structured meetings."
"Our partnership is like cat and dog—sharing a body but having distinct identities and personalities."
"Increasing coordinated collaboration increased our service capacity by 200%."
"We intentionally created space to talk about career goals, stress, and how to support each other as a team."
"Program managers are the unsung heroes who can back up design ops work in many organizations."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"People are the interface at Airbnb; it’s an oral culture rather than documentation forward."
Rebecca GimenezWork in Progress: Service Design at Airbnb
December 3, 2024
"No matter the circumstances, the answer to 'Can we?' is always yes, we can."
Lada GorlenkoTheme 2 Intro
June 9, 2022
"Research Ops needs an operational brain — it’s not the kind of brain researchers usually carry."
Brigette Metzler Dana ChrisfieldResearch Repositories: A global project by the ResearchOps Community
August 27, 2020
"Ignore the people who hate you, embrace those who love you, and focus on the fence sitters."
Discussion
June 9, 2017
"User research in government is often done without knowing what it’s called, and people aren’t always empowered to do it."
Sarah Brooks Jennifer PahlkaFireside chat with Sarah Brooks and Jen Pahlka
October 21, 2021
"Conducting retrospectives on research processes helps us identify bias, recruitment challenges, and improve methodology continuously."
Lisa Spitz Nikki BrandBuilding Trust Through Equitable Research Practices
November 18, 2022
"Experts develop insights by isolating patterns and data; as designers, we already do this daily."
Theresa NeilDesigning for Wellness: Specializing in Healthcare
May 22, 2024
"Using tools like 11 Labs, we instantly generated voices with emotion and appropriate cadence for characters."
Maverick Chan Claire LinFrom Doodle to Demo: AI as Our Storytelling Partner
October 23, 2025
"Psychological safety can be created or rebuilt very quickly with intentional team exercises."
Alla WeinbergDesign Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create It
September 8, 2022
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What role should AI play in user research tools, and how do you manage associated risks and accountability?
How can barriers like childcare and internet access be addressed to promote equitable participation?
In what ways can AI automate UX research tasks, and what limitations does it currently have?