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
"Starting with a blank spreadsheet forces you to think through your system very deeply, connecting feature changes to financial impacts."
Giff ConstableFinancial fluency for product leaders: AMA with Giff Constable
April 11, 2024
"Indigenous Australians practiced multi-scale interconnected design for 60,000 years — that's extraordinary machine designed by humans."
Dan HillStrategic design, slowdown, and the infrastructures of everyday life
April 21, 2022
"If something is not ready by the time the train leaves the station, then it catches the next train."
Jack MoffettSAFe or Sorry?
May 29, 2019
"Empathy is not a good starting point for innovation because it’s unstable and doesn’t provide a clear problem to solve."
Jim KalbachJobs To Be Done
February 25, 2021
"Our sponsors offer sessions with no sales pitches, just incredibly high-quality content."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
January 8, 2024
"Buttons should be sized 48 pixels and above to avoid fat finger errors for seniors."
Rittika BasuAge and Interfaces: Equipping Older Adults with Technological Tools
February 23, 2023
"We automated everything — now we click a button weekly to produce updated staffing and priority alignment scores."
Patrick CommarfordDesign Staffing for Impact
January 8, 2024
"The traditional user-centered design process doesn't work well for AI problems."
Dan SafferWhy AI projects fail (and what we can do about it)
May 14, 2025
"It’s really great to have no scripted approach because it lets you ask what some might call dumb questions."
Deanna MitchellDesigning with culture: Unlocking impactful insights for Product and UX
March 12, 2025
