Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Customer-Centered Design Organizations
Gold
Thursday, June 8, 2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Share the love for this talk
Customer-Centered Design Organizations
Speakers: Peter Merholz
Link:

Summary

How do we shape design organizations to always be in service of the user? Peter Merholz talks about how everything changed when he focused on getting the organization operations correct instead of just getting the design right. Peter Merholz is the VP of Design at Snagajob and the co-author of "Org Design for Design Orgs."

Key Insights

  • Great user experiences require aligning design strategy, execution, and organizational structure, not just individual designer skills.

  • Centralized design teams offer community and consistency but often struggle with strategic influence and slow delivery.

  • Decentralized embedded designers gain ownership and speed but suffer loneliness, skill narrowing, and fractured experiences.

  • A hybrid centralized partnership model balances dedicated design skill teams with close collaboration across product teams.

  • Organizing product, design, and engineering teams around customer types and journeys creates more coherent, customer-focused solutions.

  • Strong team leadership is crucial: leaders must manage down (team empowerment), across (stakeholder relationships), and up (executive communication).

  • Design organizations benefit from diverse skill sets beyond interaction and visual design, including content strategy and research.

  • Clear, shared definitions of design quality and brand experience principles enable designers to be bold and focused.

  • Leaders must be willing to say no to overextension, preserving capacity to deliver high-quality design work.

  • Relying solely on process without attention to the content and quality of the work leads to mediocrity and frustration.

Notable Quotes

"Execution is in service of the user."

"It’s not enough to have great people; you need to create the space that brings out the best in them."

"Centralized design teams tend to be brought in after decisions are made, turning design into an us versus them relationship."

"Designers embedded in teams often feel lonely and their work leads to fractured user experiences."

"Organize your product managers, designers, and engineers around customers, not features or code repositories."

"Design is always going to be subjective, so you have to figure out what quality looks like in your organization."

"If you want your teams to be bold, you need explicit quality standards and the courage to say no."

"Team leadership means managing down to empower your team, managing across to build stakeholder relationships, and managing up with executives."

"Relying on process is not a proxy for quality, and divorcing process from content is a fatal enterprise mistake."

"When the design team is organized into coherent teams working across multiple squads, designers feel more supported and less isolated."

Ask the Rosenbot
Peter Van Dijck
Hands-on AI #1: Let’s write your first AI eval
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Jorge Arango
[Demo] How to re-categorize content at scale using LLMs
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Fatimah Richmond
The Future of ReOps as a Strategic Function: A Roadmap for Getting There
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Erin Hoffman-John
This Game is Never Done: Design Leadership Techniques from the Video Game World
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Jemma Ahmed
Theme Panel
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Bria Alexander
Day 1 Panel: Up to the Minute: The latest in AI’s impact on UX
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Benjamin Real
Showing the Value of DesignOps by Not Having a DesignOps Team
2020 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
How to Identify and Increase your "Experience Quotient"
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Chris Geison
Theme Two Intro
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Megan Blocker
Theme 2 Intro
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
John Calhoun
Bring your DesignOps Story to Life! The Definitive DesignOps Book Jam
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Taiye Akin-Akinyosoye
Amplifying voices and enhancing user research through group interviews
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Kate Koch
Flex Your Super Powers: When a Design Ops Team Scales to Power CX
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Dave Malouf
The Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 1)
2022 • DesignOps Community
Jemma Ahmed
Bringing together market and user research
2019 • Advancing Research Community
Daniel J. Rosenberg
Digital Medicine Design
2019 • Enterprise Community

More Videos

Cornelius Rachieru

"While the majority of design happens in the lower half of this scale, we create gaps at the higher, systemic levels that we must address."

Cornelius Rachieru

Handling Complexity: Framing a Scale of Design

June 9, 2021

Kate Towsey

"The issue is not research ops being more organized researchers — the problems and scale are very different."

Kate Towsey

The State of ResearchOps: More Than Just Theory

June 20, 2019

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"Meeting designers where they spend their time, like integrating accessibility plugins into Figma, is the most effective way to make progress."

Saara Kamppari-Miller

DesignOps for Inclusive Design and Accessibility

May 26, 2022

Joshua Graves

"Sometimes, avoiding the conversation feels easier but can have bigger costs than facing it."

Joshua Graves

We Need To Talk: Navigating Conversations with Your Boss (Part 1 of 3)

April 14, 2025

Karen Pascoe

"If your leadership isn’t aligned to your agenda, it’s vital to negotiate and influence to bring them on board."

Karen Pascoe

Developing Experience Teams and Talent in the Enterprise

June 8, 2016

Cassandra Piester

"Share early, share ugly—that’s our mantra for this entire process."

Cassandra Piester

Developing and Deploying Your Design Operations Strategy

September 24, 2024

Monty Hammontree

"Satya Nadella’s leadership feels authentic—he puts empathy at the center of everything he does."

Monty Hammontree

The Future of UX Research

December 3, 2020

Terry Buckman

"Plans are useless, but planning is everything — that’s what war gaming is about."

Terry Buckman

Wargaming (An Introduction)

August 10, 2023

Theresa Slate

"We wanted to move from I know, which is subjective, to I can, which can be demonstrated."

Theresa Slate Erin Robertson

Why Changing Hearts & Minds Doesn’t Work When Promoting DE&I Efforts, but Checklists Do

October 4, 2023