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
"At a certain level, the only way to know how your system will work is when people use it for real."
Jeff SussnaWhat DesignOps Can Learn From DevOps
November 6, 2017
"Data is a function of our history; it reflects priorities, preferences, and prejudices."
Carol SmithOperationalizing Responsible, Human-Centered AI
June 7, 2023
"Culture is what you tolerate — if you tolerate rudeness or tardiness, it becomes part of who you are."
Mark InterranteCollaboration Flows in Product Development
June 9, 2017
"Executives first want to know what metric you will impact next quarter before approving big initiatives."
William Newton Jenny ChangHow to Lead With Data, and Without Data
June 7, 2023
"Including people with disabilities from day one builds a strong accessible foundation."
Sam ProulxAccessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
November 16, 2022
"Knowing your value as a person means not giving everything to situations that don't give back."
Shahrzad SamadzadehWhat Is My Value? Two Takes and Some Mistakes
January 8, 2024
"My dad told me very early on in my career that I had to work two times harder than anyone else to get the same things."
Dantley DavisLeadership & Diversity—A Fireside Chat with Dantley Davis
September 17, 2020
"Changing how we operate and relate to each other is the only thing in our control, regardless of organizational position."
Alla WeinbergHealing Toxic Stress
September 23, 2024
"Our goal is to be AI fluent, not necessarily AI experts."
Alnie FigueroaThe Future of Design Operations: Transforming Our Craft
September 10, 2025
