Design Skills & Practice Assessment
Design Operating Model Setup
Drove efficiency, collaboration, and team engagement
Accor’s Digital Factory was undergoing a strategic transformation in order to adopt a more product-oriented organization. This shift aimed to bring business and digital teams closer together and foster stronger alignment across functions. At the same time, the Product Design team was rapidly scaling up its operations, creating a need for more vision, a clear organisation and clarity in its practices.
To support this evolution, a Design Ops role was introduced to both organize the design function and streamline its collaboration with key stakeholders across business, product, and tech. Beyond operational efficiency, this role also aimed to empower designers to become more impactful and strategic by aligning their work more closely with business priorities, fostering a stronger design culture, and enabling them to contribute earlier and more effectively to strategic decision-making.
Since the team was scaling up quickly, with new designers joining all the time, it was crucial to clearly delineate roles, responsibilities, ways of working, and shared standards to ensure cohesion and maintain quality at scale.
Due to the shift toward a more product-centric model, alignment between design and other teams was not yet fluid. Silos and communication gaps were slowing down delivery and creating inconsistencies in user experience.
With no existing DesignOps practice, operational foundations had to be built from scratch: onboarding, rituals, tools, documentation, and governance—all while responding to day-to-day tactical needs.
Started with an in-depth analysis of the Product Design team’s current state: team structure, level, rituals, collaboration patterns, and tooling. Identified key friction points and areas of improvement to support scale and alignment.
Defined and implemented a DesignOps framework to bring clarity and consistency: onboarding processes, documentation standards, rituals (critiques, syncs), and a design governance model to support cross-team collaboration.
Worked closely with Product, Tech, and Business to create shared rituals, improve communication, and align on outcomes, thus allowing design to be more strategic and embedded in product development.
Foster a positive and energizing team atmosphere to build engagement
Bring clarity and structure to increase operational efficiency
Facilitate collaboration and critical thinking to unlock team potential
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