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
"If you come in wanting to change everything at once, you won't get the response needed to make your work meaningful."
Carol MassaDesigning Health: Integrating Service Design, Technology, and Strategy to Transform Patient and Clinician Experiences
December 3, 2024
"Naming things like the 'vibe shift' is powerful in shaping the narratives around future developments."
Devon PowersImagining Better Futures
March 9, 2022
"Gatekeeping happens through language as much as through who’s in the room."
Frances Yllana Ann Buechner Jess Jones Betsy RamacciaD.E.A.R.R. Diaries (Discipline, Experience, Architecture, Reflection + Revolution)
November 16, 2022
"We found a three percent decrease in time to market using our design system, which translates into measurable business savings."
Gonzalo GoyanesDesign ROI: Cover a Little, Get a Lot
September 8, 2022
"This is not just a typical HR survey; it focuses deeply on the products and experiences employees use daily."
Adel Du ToitGet Your CFO To Say: 'Our Strategic Goal is User Obsession'
June 10, 2022
"People connect with other people, even through screens, so employee recommendations matter digitally too."
Erin WeigelReal-world lessons to improve your conversion rates
June 26, 2024
"If we think disability as a mismatch between user and environment rather than a medical problem, it becomes easier to understand how accessibility benefits everyone."
Samuel ProulxFrom Standards to Innovation: Why Inclusive Design Wins
September 10, 2025
"A standard framework for collecting and responding to family feedback at the organizational level can increase their voice’s impact."
Shanti Mathew Natalie Sims Natalia RadywylCivic Design at Scale: Introducing the Public Policy Layer Cake
December 9, 2021
"Uploading a paper and asking the AI to explain it as if I was a bright 10-year-old helps break through jargon."
Jorge ArangoAI as Thought Partner: How to Use LLMs to Transform Your Notes (3rd of 3 seminars)
May 3, 2024