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
Sam Ladner
How Research Can Drive Strategic Foresight
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Sheryl Cababa
Thinking in systems to address climate with Sheryl Cababa
2024 • Climate UX Interest Group
Julie Baher
Culture Change—My Journey
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Emily Lessard
RFPs Without Tears: Writing Inclusive RFPS that Don't Scare Away Talent
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Smitha Papolu
Theme 3 Discussion
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Fisayo Osilaja
[Demo] The AI edge: From researcher to strategist
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Kate Towsey
ResearchOps AMA with Kate Towsey & Jake Burghardt
2025 • Advancing Research Community
Nick Lewis
Designing and building low-carbon websites independently
2025 • Climate UX Interest Group
Kate Koch
Flex Your Super Powers: When a Design Ops Team Scales to Power CX
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Jacqui Frey
Setting the Table for Dynamic Change
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Joerg Beringer
Scaling User Research with AI: Continuous Discovery of User Needs in Minutes
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Alëna Iouguina
Designing Systems at Scale
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Dan Willis
Enterprise Storytelling Sessions
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Charles Lee
Building a New Home for the Atlassian Design System
2020 • Enterprise Community
Kim Fellman Cohen
Measuring the Designer Experience
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Anupama Dhareshwar
From blueprint to bot: Designing resilient AI-powered services
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Conference

More Videos

Ariel Kennan

"When I started, there were a few practitioners in the US, a small community, and now I see this growing network and community of practice."

Ariel Kennan

Theme Two Intro

November 17, 2022

Mark Boulton

"All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability and pliability. The truth lies outside of fixed patterns."

Mark Boulton

Ops without Designers

November 7, 2018

Bria Alexander

"We have some truly phenomenal sketch notebooks, so you don’t have to worry about taking any notes on your own."

Bria Alexander

Opening Remarks

June 11, 2021

Gabrielle Verderber

"You don't want to hide away for six months and try to build the perfect documentation. It won't work."

Gabrielle Verderber

Documentation Your Team Will Actually Use

October 3, 2023

Ash Brown

"Every small initiative can lead to significant change when multiplied across communities."

Ash Brown

Silver Linings: What DesignOps Learned in the Shift to WFH

October 23, 2020

Adel Du Toit

"We enable employees to provide unlimited comments which we analyze with Amazon Comprehend for sentiment."

Adel Du Toit

Get Your CFO To Say: 'Our Strategic Goal is User Obsession'

June 10, 2022

Anna Poznyakov

"I’m drowning trying to create an understanding of our target audience for a new feature, but that leaves me no time for usability updates."

Anna Poznyakov Richa Prajapati

Get The Most Out Of Stakeholder Collaboration—and Maximize Your Research Impact

March 12, 2021

Marisa Bernstein

"Build your pool, build your practice. If you provide a great testing experience, you’ve got another person to add to your group."

Marisa Bernstein

It Takes GRIT: Lessons from the Small, but Mighty World of Civic Usability Testing

December 9, 2021

Samuel Proulx

"If we think about training AI on the average, then what we will get is more of the same."

Samuel Proulx

From Standards to Innovation: Why Inclusive Design Wins

September 10, 2025