In 2023, Schneider Electric began strengthening Design Operations (Design Ops), focusing on organizing workflows, aligning teams, and driving measurable outcomes. This discipline enables teams to deliver better user experiences by introducing tools, processes, and frameworks that optimize how design is practiced across the organization.

In 2024, the focus shifted toward testing metrics, piloting initiatives, and identifying areas of improvement. These efforts aim to prepare Schneider Electric for scaling design impact in 2025 and beyond. This article highlights the progress made, the challenges faced, and the priorities set for the future.

Mapping UX maturity: a structured process toward 2027

In 2024, Schneider Electric set out to better understand its UX maturity by using the Nielsen Norman Group’s UX Maturity Model. This model defines six stages of UX maturity, covering process, design practices, research, leadership support, and the long-term integration of UX into organizations. The assessment, conducted through workshops with design team leads, provided an objective view of where Schneider Electric stands and identified clear opportunities for growth.

In 2022, Schneider Electric was at Stage 1 — “Absent,” where UX practices were minimal, unstructured, and often overlooked. By 2024, the organization had progressed to Stage 3 — “Emergent,” reflecting the establishment of more defined methods, structured processes, and a growing internal advocacy for design.

This progress is a result of collective efforts, including discussions and alignment sessions with design leads to map out priorities and build a realistic roadmap for improvement. Moving forward, three focus areas have been identified to reach Stage 4 — “Structured” by 2027:

• Research: Establish scalable methodologies that make user discovery a systematic and mandatory part of the product development process.
• Production: Strengthen workflows to ensure the design system is embedded at the core of product development, reinforcing consistency and efficiency.
• Metrics: Enhance measurement practices, using tools such as the System Usability Scale (SUS) to track usability improvements and adoption rates.

These steps provide a clear and actionable plan to systematically scale UX practices, ensuring Schneider Electric’s design efforts continue to evolve and mature.

Quality scorecard: putting usability at the forefront

A major focus of 2024 was developing a quality scorecard to measure the usability of products and ensure teams can track and improve their impact. The System Usability Scale (SUS) was introduced as a key design metric to assess how easy products are to use. Early pilots are underway, with the aim of establishing usability measurement as a standard practice across projects.

While Net Promoter Score (NPS) remains a high-level metric in development, groundwork has been laid to integrate it into the broader quality framework in 2025. Together, SUS and NPS will provide a comprehensive view of product performance, with SUS driving design-focused improvements and NPS reflecting overall user sentiment.

By focusing on usability through SUS, Schneider Electric is beginning to build a culture where design decisions are not just intuitive but data-driven, ensuring continuous improvements across products.

Consistency scorecard: scaling design system adoption

To ensure seamless and coherent user experiences across Schneider Electric’s product ecosystem, the consistency scorecard initiative was launched in 2024. These pilots focus on tracking the adoption and application of the design system within product teams, evaluating:

1. Adoption rates: how widely the design system is implemented across projects.
2. Consistency: the level of visual and functional coherence achieved through adherence to the design system’s guidelines.

These pilots were introduced across key projects, including Wiser and Ecocare, and are already providing valuable insights into areas for improvement. Governance frameworks have been established to support scalability in 2025, ensuring that the design system becomes a cornerstone of Schneider Electric’s product development processes.

Research ops: preparing for scalable innovation in 2025

In 2024, the role of Research Ops was acknowledged as a critical area for future development. While it is still in its infancy, priorities have been identified for 2025 to lay the groundwork for a scalable research framework:

• Process standardization: establishing consistent methodologies to streamline how research is conducted across teams.
• Knowledge management: developing better systems to organize recruitment efforts and centralize research data.
• Exploring tools: evaluating platforms for unmoderated user testing and survey distribution to simplify and scale data collection.

These identified areas mark the first steps toward embedding research more deeply into product workflows, creating a foundation for informed design decisions and innovation.

Building momentum through playbooks and training

In 2024, Schneider Electric made progress in equipping teams with actionable tools to improve their practices. New playbooks were introduced, focusing on accessibility and user research, to provide frameworks for creating user-centric products. These initial efforts will accelerate in 2025, expanding the range of playbooks and scaling their adoption across teams.

Another area of focus has been providing training opportunities to upskill designers. A structured training offer has been introduced to help designers strengthen their capabilities, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and supporting the broader goals of Design Ops.

Lessons learned: refining through pilots

2024 was a year of experimentation, with pilots providing valuable insights into what works and what needs refinement. The success of the quality and consistency scorecards demonstrated the power of metrics in driving alignment and improvement. Early Research Ops discussions highlighted the importance of having a clear structure and scalable tools as a foundation for future initiatives. These efforts reflect teamwork and collaboration across teams, setting the stage for continued progress.

However, challenges remain. Scaling pilot initiatives globally requires careful coordination, and balancing simplicity with robustness continues to be an area of focus. These lessons will guide how Design Ops approaches 2025, ensuring that the foundations laid in 2024 translate into measurable, scalable impact.

Scaling design ops in 2025

As Schneider Electric moves into 2025, the focus will shift from piloting to scaling and embedding Design Ops practices across teams. Key priorities include:

• Deeper integration with product verticals: embedding Design Ops more seamlessly into product teams to improve collaboration and alignment with stakeholders.
• Scaling success stories: expanding initiatives like concept cars to showcase the impact of design and inspire broader adoption.
• Advancing research practices: developing standardized processes and tools to make research a fully integrated part of product workflows.
• Leveraging AI: exploring AI tools to enhance decision-making, optimize workflows, and empower design teams.

These initiatives will build on the progress made in 2024, ensuring Design Ops continues to deliver measurable outcomes while preparing for future challenges.

Conclusion: laying the foundation for scale

2024 was a year of testing, learning, and refining for Design Ops at Schneider Electric. From introducing scorecards to identifying priorities for research and launching new playbooks, the progress made has created a strong foundation for scaling efforts in 2025.

Looking back on this journey, the evolution of the Design Ops function itself is a testament to its growing importance. Starting as a one-person initiative in 2023, it grew to a team of two in 2024, with a third member joining in 2025. This steady expansion marks the beginning of a phase where scaling efforts can truly take off, enabling Schneider Electric to embed Design Ops more deeply into its workflows and deliver even greater impact.

With the momentum built in 2024, the focus now shifts to scaling successes and further integrating Design Ops practices across teams. As Schneider Electric moves forward, Design Ops is positioned to continue driving operational excellence and creating user experiences that transform complexity into simplicity.

Design Ops: piloting metrics and scaling UX Impact was originally published in Schneider Electric Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In 2023, we made a strategic decision to strengthen Design Operations for the Digital Design Team at Schneider Electric. This investment aims to enhance our ability to create delightful user experiences by leveraging expertise, methods, and tools to streamline our design processes. We also focused on organizing team learning and growth opportunities while nurturing a vibrant design community and culture within Schneider Electric.

Our mission is clear: “We infuse digital design culture at Schneider Electric to enhance UX quality and consistency by bridging brand, product teams, and end users.” This mission guides our efforts toward achieving excellence in user experience and driving innovation through design. Additionally, we’ve distilled three key messages to encapsulate our values:

1. Designers impact business at the heart of the product team.
2. The end user is at the core of each decision.
3. Design transforms complexity into simple human experiences.

Let’s review our progress and challenges from January 2023 onward.

Scaling up and laying foundations

In 2023, our Digital Design team at Schneider Electric grew significantly, expanding from 15 to 50 people. This substantial growth presented the challenge of laying the foundation and organizing the new team to ensure smooth operations and alignment. As we navigated this rapid expansion, our focus remained on fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and excellence in user experience. We centered our efforts on three core pillars: Visibility, Prioritization, and Development.

Visibility:

Our main goal was to integrate our design activities better within the product teams and cultivate a stronger design culture. To achieve this, we implemented several key initiatives:

• Crafting a clear design vision and speech: Emphasizing the pivotal role of designers within the product team and showcasing their business impact.
• Developing a global design workflow: Streamlining collaboration to keep the end user at the forefront of decision-making.
• Establishing a central document repository: Making it easy for team members to access essential resources, simplifying their experience and demonstrating how design transforms complexity into simple human experiences.

Prioritization:

Prioritization became crucial in a landscape where every decision holds weight. We introduced two initiatives to aid our teams:

• Equipping teams with quarterly OKRs and coaching programs: Providing a seamless roadmap and demonstrating the tangible value of design in every decision.
• Crafting a KPI dashboard: Measuring our progress and success, ensuring alignment with our overarching goals and highlighting the significance of design in achieving business outcomes.

Development:

Nurturing talent and fostering growth were central themes in our journey. We embarked on five key programs to cultivate our design ecosystem:

• Providing comprehensive HR presentations and career path templates: Empowering designers to chart their professional growth and reinforcing their business impact.
• Implementing a job board and expert dashboards: Facilitating talent acquisition and ensuring the right skills match the right roles.
• Launching community initiatives and mapping artifacts: Fostering a culture of learning and collaboration, turning complex processes into enjoyable experiences.
• Introducing team rituals and activities: Boosting morale and engagement, transforming the workplace into a vibrant hub of creativity and innovation.
• Welcoming new team members with a well-crafted onboarding process: Ensuring a seamless transition into the organization and highlighting how design transforms onboarding into a smooth journey.

For a deeper look at our 2023 Design Ops review, explore our detailed report here. It offers insights into our progress, enhancing user experiences, and nurturing a strong design culture at Schneider Electric.

Continuous improvement: successes and area for improvement

At Schneider Electric, our Design Ops team values feedback and continuous improvement to support great design and user experiences. We regularly review what’s working and what needs refining. Here’s what went well and where we faced challenges:

What worked

• Alignment on vision, mission, and key messages: creating a unified “Design speech” within our team and with external stakeholders.
• Co-creation of a new designer career path framework: in collaboration with Human Resources, making it easier for teams to plan ahead and hire new talent.
• Launch of a single source of truth documentation: adopted by team members, along with a resource management tool for the leadership team.
• Development of a design practice: establishing communication spaces and rituals for both our Digital Design Team and the Global Schneider Designers Community (the “Design Guild”).
• Setting up a Figma Enterprise organization plan: better fitting the existing team structure.

Areas for improvement

• OKR (Objectives and Key Results) agile framework: revising the format to better fit the current organizational maturity and prioritization.
• Transparent teamwork design workflow: creating a roadmap for new playbook delivery and aligning closely with Designers’ expectations.
• Building Design value acculturation with stakeholders: investing more in amplifying the value of design within Schneider Electric.

What’s new for our 2024 roadmap

Since the start of 2024, we have focused on setting and tracking metrics to drive even greater success. With our foundation set and goals clear, we are ready to continue transforming complexity into simple, human experiences. Our 2024 focus remains on elevating our efforts in Quality, Consistency, and Human Centricity, ensuring that every design decision reflects our commitment to delivering exceptional user experiences.

Empowering Design Ops at Digital Design Team: building foundations and driving impact was originally published in Schneider Electric Design on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.