Customer-Centered Design Organizations
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."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"One out of every 12 men have some form of color blindness — that was overlooked until we changed our flag icons and got tears of thanks."
Dan WillisEnterprise Storytelling Sessions
June 8, 2016
"People in some countries are three times more likely to buy a product if it’s localized in their language."
Nancy DouyonWe'll Figure That Out in the Next Launch: Enterprise Tech's Nobility Complex
June 15, 2018
"Empathy in design has been too focused on people and often on standardized personas rather than true diversity and marginalized voices."
Christian BasonExpand—Rethinking Design for Public Challenges
September 14, 2022
"Do I find a way to make this conversation more about the software as scheduled or do I show Laura how to react to the unplanned?"
Randolph Duke IIWar Stories LIVE! Randy Duke II
March 30, 2020
"Ivana will teach you how to scale fast and big from day one through product operations."
Lada GorlenkoTheme 1: Intro
January 8, 2024
"Our biological bodies are hardwired to prioritize survival above everything else."
Alla WeinbergHealing Toxic Stress
September 23, 2024
"Space matters, but don’t start with the space; start by changing people, processes, and mindsets."
Sam YenDriving Organizational Change Through Design? Do more of this and less of that
June 9, 2017
"More people being closer to customers is very likely to help us achieve better products and services."
Leisa ReicheltThe Five Dysfunctions of Democratized Research at Scale
March 30, 2020
"We’re typically designing products to solve really complex issues."
Kit UngerTheme 2: Introduction
June 10, 2021
