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
"If design, product, and development use different tools, we end up talking past one another."
Jon Fukuda Amy Evans Ignacio Martinez Joe MeersmanThe Big Question about Innovation: A Panel Discussion
September 25, 2024
"Breaking up design research training into short exercises over time helps get people out of the building and engaged."
Louis Rosenfeld Jose Coronado Rachel Posman Guneet Singh Crystal YanThe Bigger Picture: A Panel Discussion
October 23, 2019
"Good problem statements begin with aspirational mindsets and use backcasting to envision preferred futures."
Surya VankaUnleashing Swarm Creativity to Solve Enterprise Challenges
June 10, 2021
"The epidemic of isolation is tied to digital design that creates connectivity without connection."
Daniel GloydDesigning Warmth
February 26, 2025
"Cursor is super transparent about what files it creates and how it builds the logic step by step."
Maverick Chan Claire LinFrom Doodle to Demo: AI as Our Storytelling Partner
October 23, 2025
"Operations have to be constantly improving, just like when we ship features."
Cassandra PiesterDeveloping and Deploying Your Design Operations Strategy
September 24, 2024
"We became entrepreneurs internally, doing work across other GE divisions to generate funding."
Discussion
June 9, 2017
"The more you can help product managers reduce risk, the more they will look at you as their best friend."
Catt SmallMoving from Execution to Strategy as a Designer
December 6, 2022
"Small micro changes every week add up — ask your team what tiny improvements they’ve made recently."
Mark InterranteCollaboration Flows in Product Development
June 9, 2017
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
In what ways can organizations use scaffolding to overcome bureaucratic constraints in service design?
How can national development agencies strategically manage their innovation portfolios to balance risk and impact?
How can gamification fail when applied superficially, such as with meaningless badges?