Establishing Design Operations to Scale Product Design at PMI
Sector: Professional Organization, Not-for-profit
Challenge: Establish a unified design process, a comprehensive toolkit, and robust onboarding resources to improve team efficiency and ensure consistent outcomes across a growing digital product design team working with fragmented processes and inconsistent UI.
My Role: Strategy, Project Management, Creative Direction, Documentation
Collaborators: Zach Schweitzer (UX Design Leader), Shelly Rolandson (Product Designer), Nick Richardson (Design Engineer), Stephen Rennekamp (Visual Designer), David Dieter (Visual Designer), Nick Mahieu (Design System Product Owner), John Galletta (Solutions Architect)
Timeline: 24 months
Platform: Figma, Miro, Slack, Linear
Team Impact: 15+ product designers across multiple product teams
Key Deliverables: Design process standard, Figma UI kit, onboarding documentation, training program, support ticketing system
Executive Summary
As the strategic lead for design operations at The Project Management Institute, I established the foundational processes, tools, and resources needed to scale our digital product design practice. I led the organization-wide transition from Sketch and InVision to Figma, created a comprehensive design process standard, built a custom UI kit with a team of two designers, and developed training programs that enabled 15+ designers to work more efficiently and consistently. This work reduced design inconsistencies, accelerated onboarding from weeks to days, and established PMI's first formal design operations function. Survey results show 85% of users report greater efficiency and 90% report improved consistency in their work.
The Need for Design Operations
Our digital product design team faced challenges with fragmented design processes and inconsistent UI across experiences. It became clear that we needed a unified design process and tool kit that would address these pain points and improve team efficiency. Additionally, scaling our design system and providing comprehensive onboarding resources were essential for scaling our team and ensuring consistent outcomes across all products.
Building the Design Operations Foundation
Establishing a Design Process Standard
The Digital Experience Design Standard provides a unified framework to align our product teams with shared principles and best practices.
Defines the essential steps to ensure quality and consistency in all design work that should be taken for every project or task
Acts as a flexible guide that allows designers to tailor their efforts based on the project's needs
Provides a defensible, industry-standard approach to delivering high-quality, accessible, useful, and usable digital products
Transitioning to Figma
We recognized Figma as the ideal tool for collaborative design, real-time feedback, and version control. We initiated a phased transition from Sketch and InVision to Figma, ensuring a smooth adoption process. We organized training sessions, conducted hands-on workshops, and provided resources to help team members quickly grasp Figma's capabilities.
2022 | PI 4Figma & contract budget approved.
Hire and onboard a UI designer.
Establish Core styles in Figma to inform tokens and variables.
Build roadmap.
2023 | PI 1Figma workspace, teams and file naming conventions established.
Design token naming convention established.
Core styles aligned to tokens, Figma styles created for library.
2023 | PI 1How We Figma onboarding guide completed.
Bi-weekly Figma training sessions begin.
Weekly Design System Office Hours begin.
2023 | PI 2Component & Asset libraries in progress.
File migration and Invision sunset plan are established.
Component development begins.
2023 | PI 3Designers migrate Sketch content to Figma.
Invision sunset
Figma variables released.
2023 | PI 4Catalyst 1.0 UI kit beta launch.
UI Kit release notes launched.
UI Kit Support Ticket system launched.
All designers working in Figma.
Figma UI Kit and Starter File
With a team of two designers, we built and launched a custom, comprehensive Figma UI kit to maintain design consistency and accelerate workflows across product teams.
Maintaining good file hygiene is crucial for efficient collaboration and streamlined workflows. We developed a project starter file template to help ensure consistent design handoff and file organization across all product teams.
Our project starter file helps ensure consistent design handoff and file organization. View the Starter File
A sample of assets, components, and templates from our libraries. Explore the components
Figma Designer Playbook
To facilitate our designers' onboarding, we created detailed documentation covering workspace hierarchy, file organization, naming conventions, and best practices for leveraging our component libraries.
Component Documentation
To promote knowledge sharing and enable efficient collaboration, we created in-depth documentation for each component within our design system. This documentation includes usage guidelines, accessibility considerations, and implementation examples.
Training & Knowledge Sharing
To encourage knowledge sharing, collaboration, and skill development, we established bi-weekly Figma working sessions. These sessions provide a dedicated space for the team to explore new features, share tips and tricks, and collaboratively solve design challenges.
Design System Office Hours
To support the adoption and evolution of our design system, we introduced bi-weekly design system office hours. These sessions offer dedicated time for designers to ask questions, discuss component needs, and receive guidance on system usage and best practices.
Support Ticketing System
To help the team effectively manage and prioritize bug reports and new component requests, we established a structured ticketing system. This ensures transparency, accountability, and timely resolution of design system issues.
Impact: Scaling Design Through Operations
Measurable Results
Improved Collaboration: Transitioning to Figma enabled real-time collaboration, seamless sharing of design files, and instant feedback loops between designers and stakeholders.
Streamlined Workflow: The development of the Figma UI kit significantly sped up the design process, allowing designers to focus on solving user problems rather than recreating common interface patterns.
Scalability and Consistency: Designer onboarding documentation provided a clear framework for new team members, enabling them to contribute effectively from day one while maintaining design consistency.
Knowledge Sharing and Growth: The bi-weekly Figma working sessions and design system office hours created a culture of collaboration and continuous learning across the team.
“The ease of handoff has been exponential!”
Steffane Creighton - UX & Visual Designer
“You can’t imagine the difference the UI Kit has made at PMI. It’s been a total game-changer!”
Luis Cielak - Lead Experience Designer
“The Design System team has played a vital role in enabling me to contribute quickly and effectively to projects.”
Joe Young - Experience Designer
“Access to the design system empowers me to create concepts consistent with our brand. This saves me time from finessing and wrangling with these details so that I can focus on the architecture of the experience, discussions with the business and team members to build consensus and alignment on a solution, and ultimately build it for release to market in a rapid fashion.”
Karen McArthur - Lead Experience Designer
“Not having to specify colors, fonts, spacing, etc., saves me so much time!”
Tim Douglas - Experience Designer
“PMI Infinity would not have been able to launch on time without the amazing design system that PMI has put together. It removed guesswork, answered uncertainty, provided styling, and even whole components, saving my team's entire sprint’s worth of work!”
Shane Bair - Emerging Product Technology Leader
Outcomes and Continuous Improvement
The introduction of these tools and processes has significantly improved collaboration, design consistency, and overall team efficiency. By establishing a unified design process, comprehensive toolkit, and robust onboarding resources, we created a foundation that enables our team to scale while maintaining quality.
Quantified Impact:
85% of users agree that using the design system has enabled greater efficiency in our product development process.
90% of users agree that the design system helps them deliver more consistent and scalable digital experiences.
Strategic Outcomes
Reduced designer onboarding time from 4-6 weeks to one week
Eliminated tool fragmentation by successfully migrating 15+ designers from Sketch and InVision to Figma
Established repeatable processes for design reviews, component requests, and system governance
Created self-service resources that reduced dependency on design leadership for common tasks
Built a culture of documentation and knowledge sharing across the product design team
What's Next:
My goal is to continuously elevate our Design Ops maturity by implementing robust processes for talent development, resource utilization, design tools and workflows, and establishing metrics to measure user satisfaction, design quality, and efficiency. Future initiatives include developing design quality scorecards, implementing automated design system health checks, and expanding our training curriculum to cover advanced topics like accessibility auditing and design-to-development handoff optimization.
Key Learnings:
Design operations is fundamentally about removing friction and enabling teams to do their best work. The success of this initiative came from listening to designer pain points, starting with quick wins (such as standardized file naming) and building momentum toward larger changes (such as tool migration). The weekly office hours proved invaluable for building trust and ensuring adoption; designers were more likely to use the system when they knew support was readily available.
If I were to approach this differently, I would have established formal metrics earlier to demonstrate ROI to leadership. While qualitative feedback was strong, quantitative data on time savings and consistency improvements would have helped secure additional resources sooner.