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
"Vibe coding, the blurring of roles, creates a competitive advantage because there is less complex communication."
Jess GrecoClaiming your power: Practical tools for amplifying your unique voice
March 13, 2025
"We Westerners are designing for ourselves without realizing it, feeding back into a loop of luxury products."
Nancy DouyonWe'll Figure That Out in the Next Launch: Enterprise Tech's Nobility Complex
June 15, 2018
"We ended up doing an average of five labs per quarter covering 12 to 15 research questions, which helped avoid design delays."
Feleesha SterlingBuilding a Rapid Research Program
May 18, 2023
"Research run rampant — anyone feeling empowered to do research can sometimes cause quality challenges."
Nalini P. KotamrajuTwo Jobs in One: Being a “Leader who is a Researcher” and a “Researcher who is a Leader"
March 10, 2021
"Better strategy is continuous, circular, and evolves in real time with every organizational action."
Nathan ShedroffDouble Your Mileage: Use Your Research Strategically
March 31, 2020
"Good research does not speak for itself; it requires a whole communication plan and explicit role as a catalyst for change."
Robin BeersBeyond Insights: Researchers as Organizational Change Catalysts
March 25, 2024
"Diverse teams help you ask better questions about who might be missing from the table or the project."
Joi FreemanA New Vantage Point: Building a Pipeline for Multifaceted Research(ers)
March 30, 2020
"Net Promoter Score is just one question, but it’s a powerful way to measure loyalty and customer experience."
Julie BaherCulture Change—My Journey
May 14, 2015
"Research produces so much data, but synthesizing it and choosing what to act on is a real challenge."
Anna AvrekhUser Research, Design, and Product - A Love Story
March 11, 2021
