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
"I spent too much time trying to change company culture and should have focused more on just getting things done."
Shipra KayanHow we Built a VoC (Voice of the Customer) Practice at Upwork from the Ground Up
September 30, 2021
"Sharing a language of design gave us and our partners a consistent experience and the confidence to work together."
Russ UngerGetting Out from Under Everyone: How to Escape the Paralysis of Getting Started
June 8, 2016
"We don't do PRDs anymore; we just vibe code, but that still means putting the right prompt behind it."
Frances Yllana Kaaren Hanson Husani Oakley Dan OlsenDesignOps Exposed: What do our peers really think of us?
September 11, 2025
"Trust is built not just in big moments but in little marbles filling a jar over time."
Etienne FangThe Power of Care: From Human-Centered Research to Humanity-Centered Leadership
March 10, 2021
"We will learn from trauma-informed practices and learning science to advance how we do things."
Jemma AhmedTheme 2 Intro
March 10, 2022
"Collaboration is working together; coordination is doing separate parts and then syncing up later."
Dave MaloufClosing Keynote: Amplify. Not Optimize.
October 24, 2019
"Low UX maturity is often a symptom of a bigger problem in how you build product, not just design adoption."
Bob Baxley Sara Asche Anderson Sharon Bautista Frank Duran Jamie Kaspszak Abbey Smalley Sylas SouzaTheme 4: Discussion
January 8, 2024
"It’s a muscle to build: agreeing on goals, measuring, learning, and adjusting over time to avoid wasted effort."
Christian Crumlish Aditi Ruiz Johanna Kollmann Catt SmallMorning Insights Panel
December 6, 2022
"Understanding local culture and context is often the make or break for success in global expansions."
Chui Chui TanGlobal insights: Embracing international and intercultural research for innovation
March 12, 2025
