Workshop 1: Building and Communicating a Design Vision

Objective: Help leadership and senior designers create a vision that actually means something. One that inspires the team and gives everyone a shared direction.

Duration: 2 hours

Participants: Design leadership, senior designers, cross-functional partners if useful

Structure:

Introduction and Importance (15 min) Talk about why vision matters. How it shapes decisions, prioritization, and culture. Set the context before diving in.

Individual Reflection (20 min) Everyone writes their own version of the vision. Two questions to answer: What impact should design have in this company? What values should guide how we work?

Small Group Sharing (30 min) Break into smaller groups. Share what you wrote. Look for themes. Note where people see things differently.

Vision Synthesis (40 min) Come back together. Facilitate a session to draft a unified vision and mission statement. This is the hard part. Make it clear. Make it real.

Communication Strategy (15 min) Plan how you'll roll this out. Town halls, onboarding, leadership updates. A vision nobody hears is just a document.

Outcomes:

• A clear, shared design vision

• Alignment on strategic goals

• A plan to actually communicate and embed it

Workshop 2: Running Effective Design Critiques and Feedback Sessions

Objective: Build the skills and norms for giving and receiving feedback that actually helps. The kind that raises quality and builds trust instead of killing morale.

Duration: 90 minutes

Participants: All design team members

Structure:

Feedback Principles Overview (15 min) Introduce a model like RADAR: Recognize, Ask, Discuss, Agree, Review. Give people a framework to work from.

Best Practices Presentation (10 min) Cover the basics. Tone, timing, framing, what to focus on in a critique.

Role-Playing Exercises (45 min) Break into pairs or small groups. Practice giving and receiving feedback on real or example work. This is where it clicks.

Group Debrief (20 min) Come back together. Share what worked, what felt hard, what you learned about yourself.

Outcomes:

• More confidence in feedback conversations

• Team norms for respectful, actionable critique

• Stronger psychological safety and openness

Workshop 3: Scaling Design with DesignOps

Objective: Give design leaders and managers the frameworks to build DesignOps that actually works. Intake, prioritization, capacity planning, workflow optimization.

Duration: 2 hours

Participants: Design leadership, DesignOps roles, design managers

Structure:

Intro to DesignOps (20 min) Explain what DesignOps is, why it matters, and where teams usually struggle.

Intake Process Walkthrough (30 min) Walk through a centralized request intake system and prioritization framework. Show how it works in practice.

Capacity Planning Exercise (40 min) Use example data to forecast workload, spot bottlenecks, and balance bandwidth across the team.

Workflow Optimization Brainstorm (30 min) Identify pain points together. Design process improvements as a group.

Outcomes:

• Clear understanding of DesignOps principles

• Intake and prioritization tools ready to adapt

• Capacity planning strategies

• An actionable plan for process improvements

Workshop 4: Creating and Maintaining Design Systems

Objective: Hands-on work building, documenting, and evolving a design system. The goal is consistency and speed at scale.

Duration: 3 hours

Participants: Product designers, UI designers, DesignOps, front-end developers

Structure:

Design System Foundations (30 min) Overview of what a design system includes, why it matters, and examples that work well.

Component Building Exercise (90 min) Collaborative session to design and prototype reusable UI components. Get your hands dirty.

Documentation Best Practices (30 min) How to write clear, accessible guidelines and contribution processes. Documentation is half the system.

Governance and Versioning (30 min) Define who owns what, how often things get updated, and how changes get communicated.

Outcomes:

• Practical experience building components

• Draft documentation samples

• A governance model framework

• Better alignment across teams on design standards

Workshop 5: Career Growth and Performance Calibration

Objective: Define clear expectations, performance metrics, and growth paths. Get leadership aligned on how to evaluate and promote fairly.

Duration: 2 hours

Participants: Design leadership, HR partners, senior design managers

Structure:

Role Definition Review (30 min) Walk through competency matrices and levels. Make sure everyone understands what's expected at each stage.

Calibration Exercise (45 min) Practice evaluating anonymized case studies or peer reviews. The goal is consistency across evaluators.

Career Growth Planning (30 min) Build individualized growth plans that connect to what the org needs.

Promotion Criteria Discussion (15 min) Define transparent guidelines for promotions. Plan how to communicate them.

Outcomes:

• Shared understanding of performance standards

• More consistent evaluations

• Clear career paths and growth plans

• A framework for fair, transparent promotions

Workshop 6: Data-Driven Design Decisions

Objective: Teach design leaders and teams how to set meaningful KPIs, read data, and weave metrics into strategy and execution.

Duration: 2 hours

Participants: Design leadership, product designers, UX researchers, data analysts

Structure:

Introduction to Design Metrics (30 min) Overview of key metrics: engagement, retention, conversion, satisfaction. What to measure and why.

Data Interpretation Exercise (45 min) Hands-on work with sample datasets or analytics dashboards. Practice reading what the numbers say.

Integrating Metrics into Design Workflow (30 min) Discuss how to use data for validating hypotheses and prioritizing iterations. Make it part of how you work, not an afterthought.

Communicating Impact (15 min) Craft narratives that combine qualitative and quantitative data. This is how you make stakeholders care.

Outcomes:

• Familiarity with relevant design KPIs

• Confidence in analyzing and interpreting data

• A strategy for embedding data into the design process

• Better storytelling around design impact

Summary

This workshop series gives design orgs a practical path to build leadership skills, operational excellence, and strategic impact.

What it covers:

• Shared vision and purpose

• Effective feedback culture

• Scalable operations through DesignOps

• Strong design system practices

• Clear career growth frameworks

• Data-informed decision making

Each workshop is built for real engagement and real-world application. The goal is helping teams move from tactical execution to strategic leadership.