Let's work together

Design operations review

We review how your design teams are organised, to pinpoint what’s keeping them from an effective and efficient execution of their increasingly complex creative and strategic design work.

Let your creatives create

Most organisations have formalised, standardised, scripted or even automated large chunks of the design process. Still, at scale, designers often struggle with a speedy design delivery without compromising on quality.

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Operations in design

How do we collaborate with development, and with our stakeholders? How do we make sure we’re all on the same page, without having to discuss every single detail? How do we leverage user insights and product analytics? How do we manage our design system, our software, recruitment, and onboarding? How do we get the resources for our next initiative?

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Stop asking creatives to work on operations

These are important issues – but not all of your designers have to be involved in addressing them. Let’s stop asking creatives to work on operational tasks. Let’s free them up to be amazing at the work they are best at:

conversing and empathizing with users
mapping out the problem space
conceptualising design ideas
creating prototypes
refining user experiences

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Activities and outcomes

Our DesignOps review sets you up for high-quality design, high efficiency, and high satisfaction. It revolves around the principles of team, strategy, discovery, delivery, and culture, and consists of the following elements:

Assess how design teams communicate and collaborate, and help them prioritise by connecting design goals to those of other departments and the organisation as a whole.
Review the design strategy in terms of connecting design initiatives, resources, and desired outcomes for more result-driven design teams.
Map out how design teams gather and analyse customer feedback and other data, and integrate insights and evidence into the design process.
Gather documentation and standards for design practices, complete or condense it, and implement it throughout the design organisation.
Map out your designers’ tools landscape and identify gaps and overlaps.

Get started today

If you experience too many cooks in the (design) kitchen, too many overworked or burnt-out designers, and a low ROI of design in general – step up your DesignOps.

Get started by understanding the business value of DesignOps.

Whenever you spot opportunities for improvement, implement small new habits, and keep learning as you go.

Or get some inspiration from how we laid down a solid plan for a design system with the City of Amsterdam, and how we implemented a multi-branded design system leveraging design tokens at Signify.

Would you like a quote?

The right approach depends on where you are now and where you want to go. Leave your details, and we'll schedule a (remote) consultation to figure out what you need.

From absent to incidental

From incidental to structural

From structural to integral

Characteristics

User research is incidental and ad hoc.
Fragmented and outdated user journey maps.

Insights are not findable or accessible for every team.

No set of fixed methods.

Initiating fixed working methods.

Systematic.

The user journey becomes the starting point for the workflow.

Central storage of insights. Rights and access are managed.

Continuous user research, testing and implementation of improvements.

The same, interchangeable methods for collecting user data throughout the organization.

It is clear who can (and must) make the decisions.

Every product team - in all relevant chapters and departments - has the same way of working.

Hike One helpt

We start with a short audit.

We help you realize your first successes.

We give you the tools to work based on user data. We collect input from your target group.

Depending on where you are, Hike One can take responsibility while we take care of the implementation together.

We help with creating structure, defining roles and selecting the right tools.

We help to coach your (new) experts in-house.

We ensure that you can deliver consistently high quality with less effort.

Together we continuously map and manage the user journey, with responsibility increasingly shifting to your own team members.

We help you get the entire organization working based on user journeys.

We spread the gospel across all silos and we help coach the coaches.

If necessary, we help develop the business case and present it at C-level.

About Hike One

Hike One supports organizations in designing and improving their digital products. We mainly work for corporates, SMEs, and government agencies. In 2023, Hike One was named the best UX design agency in the Netherlands by Emerce 100 based on customer feedback. Hike One's clients include ASML, Heineken, Liberty Global, Municipality of Amsterdam, Marktplaats, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Philips, Rabobank, Rituals, and Signify.