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
"The challenge and opportunity is to expand what performance can mean."
Jen van der MeerService design performs value
November 19, 2025
"Think of AI more like a junior associate, a really powerful one, not a replacement."
Louis Rosenfeld Billy Carlson Jon Fukuda Maria TaylorHow AI will Change DesignOps Tooling
October 3, 2023
"Craft isn't gonna help you feel more fulfilled, influential or powerful. It cannot meet that need."
Jess GrecoClaiming your power: Practical tools for amplifying your unique voice
March 13, 2025
"There’s strength in numbers, and together you might get that very large stone over the top of that very steep hill."
Louis RosenfeldWelcome / Housekeeping
June 6, 2023
"Investing in teaching from the ground up helps grow the design ops discipline for the future."
Laine Riley Prokay Lisa GordonCarving a Path for Early Career DesignOps Practitioners
September 9, 2022
"Culture is messy and a big mess, and you have to work at it with intentionality but not heavy processes."
Miles OrkinCreativity and Culture
November 8, 2018
"Every small action counts when it comes to sustainability in urban settings."
Lena ShenkarenkoCollaborative Wireframing for Creating Team Alignment and Shipping Better Products
October 21, 2020
"Shared understanding is the first layer of driving impact, not just completing studies or putting personas on walls."
Dave HoraAdvice for Establishing Research
December 8, 2022
"To maintain tagging and freshness, you need content PMs with expertise, supported by robust content management processes."
Ben Davies Matt Duignan Andrew Michael Dr. Emily DiLeoExpert Panel: The Principles of Research Repository Design
March 11, 2022