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
"Consistency over business unit efficiency meant choosing a unified interface over letting each business unit do their own thing."
Davis Neable Guy SegalHow to Drive a Design Project When you Don’t Have a Design Team
June 10, 2021
"I really don’t like when we design our systems so well, because it makes the consumer think they might want it, and so they take too long to decide they actually didn’t want it."
John MaedaMaking Sense of Enterprise UX
June 9, 2016
"Content is created all over and inconsistently; leadership needs to see content as the fuel driving the experience."
Kevin M. HoffmanTheme 2: Enterprise Team Journey
June 3, 2019
"Personas need to push back. Conflict makes for better stories and better products."
Dan WillisEnterprise Storytelling Sessions
June 3, 2019
"Synthesis is a researcher’s superpower, not just analysis or breaking things down."
Robin Beers Nalini Kotamraju Andy WarrPanel: Excellence in Communicating Insights
March 26, 2024
"Most business tools focus on quantitative value and are terrible at capturing qualitative value, where design lives."
Nathan ShedroffRedefining Value: Bridging the Innovation Culture Divide
May 14, 2015
"White people are not the problem. White supremacy culture is the problem."
Spencer L. A. StultzWhy Social Justice Frameworks are Necessary for Successful DEI/JEDI Initiatives
October 4, 2023
"We need to create an army of design thinkers across the organization who can make better decisions on what to build and how to build it."
Jemma AhmedTheme 2 Intro
January 8, 2024
"If your leadership isn’t aligned to your agenda, it’s vital to negotiate and influence to bring them on board."
Karen PascoeDeveloping Experience Teams and Talent in the Enterprise
June 8, 2016
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
How might design researchers balance scientific rigor with vulnerability and immersion to create better human-centered designs?
What practical practices can make accessibility a sustainable part of daily design and development workflows?
What advice can help professionals recognize and respond to internal misalignment signals before burnout?