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 Workshop is an outlet for innovation, pushing designers out of their day-to-day to solve problems quickly."
Meredith BlackScaling Design Culture
November 6, 2017
"Emotions last 30 to 120 seconds, but identity and meaningful value go much deeper in relationships with products."
Nathan ShedroffRedefining Value: Bridging the Innovation Culture Divide
May 14, 2015
"Feedback is more like an investment and a contribution into not just the person's work, but also to their growth."
Vanessa VarinFeedback: The Other F-Word
September 10, 2025
"Your breath is the most powerful thing; it reminds us of the power and agency that we do have as individuals."
Zariah CameronReDesigning Wellbeing for Equitable Care in the Workplace
September 23, 2024
"Sometimes being a leader means making decisions that feel like high stakes gambling with incomplete data."
Nalini P. KotamrajuTwo Jobs in One: Being a “Leader who is a Researcher” and a “Researcher who is a Leader"
March 10, 2021
"HR, especially Learning and Development, holds the real power of organizational transformation."
Jeff GothelfThe Intersection of Lean and Design
January 10, 2019
"My time is more expensive than my money; fraudulent data wastes valuable time."
Benjamin Wiedmaier Annie MayfieldRedefining Toolkits: Unbundling to Create a Perfect Match
March 11, 2025
"I booked rooms, set up usability tests, but no one came until we bribed with beer and chocolate."
JJ KercherA Roadmap for Maturing Design in the Enterprise
June 15, 2018
"Today's problems come from yesterday's solutions."
Sheryl CababaLiving in the Clouds: Adopting a Systems Thinking Mindset
June 6, 2023