Designing a Better Process
Turning Pain Points into Collaborative, Sustainable Improvements
After you’ve uncovered what’s broken, the next challenge is to build something better—and make it stick. Like any great user-centered solution, a better process needs input from everyone it affects. And it needs to be measured, not just by speed, but by how confidently and creatively teams can work within it.
Reframe the Process Like a Product
The moment I started thinking of our process as a product, everything changed. I used a familiar UX tool to define its purpose:
To streamline the design-to-delivery workflow,
By simplifying feedback, improving briefs, and clarifying roles,
So that teams can collaborate with less friction and launch faster, better work.
That clarity helped me socialize the goal across departments and get buy-in to try new approaches.
Small Wins, Big Impact
Here are some examples of changes we made that had meaningful results:
We replaced a generic creative brief with a shared intake form co-owned by strategy and design.
We reduced stakeholder feedback to two planned rounds, with alignment meetings ahead of each.
We introduced a “QA your file” checklist for designers before handoff, saving hours of dev time.
Framework: Efficiency Opportunity Matrix
| Opportunity | Impact | Effort | Priority | How to Collaborate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standardize briefs | High | Low | High | Co-create with Strategy and Account |
| Reduce feedback rounds | High | Medium | High | Align with Legal, Brand, and PMs upfront |
| Introduce async reviews | Medium | Low | Medium | Use shared tools (e.g., Figma comments, Loom recaps) |
| Add QA earlier in flow | High | Medium | High | Partner with Dev and QA leads to define early checks |
| Align design with business goals | High | Medium | High | Tie briefs to OKRs and review outcomes in retrospectives |
Bring the Team Along
No one wants a new process imposed on them. The best systems I’ve helped build were co-created. Give designers space to test ideas, run pilots, and own pieces of the workflow. Let them lead a retro.
Ask them to propose ways to cut down back-and-forth. When people see their fingerprints on the process, they’re more likely to stick to it.
Final Thoughts
Design operations are living systems. To create lasting change, you have to build with the people using the system every day.
Collaborate across disciplines, set measurable goals, and treat the process like a product: design it, test it, and refine it. That’s how you build a process people believe in—and want to be part of.