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
"Our team-based costing accounts for changing project roles and time, reflecting true collaborative effort."
Chelsea MauldinLet's Talk About Money
November 17, 2022
"Researchers must respect participants' ownership of their own narratives and foster intersectional inclusivity."
Noah BondRedefining truth and inclusivity: Navigating data ownership and ethical research in the age of disinformation
March 11, 2025
"Artifacts capture our decisions and give us a place to point back when misalignment happens."
Scher Foord Corey Greenltch Sarah RoweTurn the Ship Around: How to Apply Design Thinking Across Your Organization
June 10, 2021
"When you use more accessible products internally, you make it easier to hire and retain people with disabilities."
Saara Kamppari-MillerTheme Three Intro
October 4, 2023
"HITS is not a replacement for researchers but an augmentation to scale their expertise across the organization."
Matt DuignanHITS, Microsoft's internal human insight system: From research library to living body of knowledge
July 16, 2019
"It’s not always a charismatic repository that people flock to, but tools that seek you out where you work are more effective."
Ned Dwyer Emily Stewart James WallisThe Intersection of Design and ResearchOps
September 24, 2024
"Leadership is a mode, not a title, and anyone can be a leader."
Nalini P. KotamrajuTwo Jobs in One: Being a “Leader who is a Researcher” and a “Researcher who is a Leader"
March 10, 2021
"They thought if we build system functionality and send people to training, it will just work. Spoiler: it didn’t."
Dan WillisFilling the Void
November 7, 2018
"We have over a thousand participants from 61 countries, but remember this is only a sliver of the broader service design community."
Marc FonteijnFirst Insights from the 2025 Service Design Salary(+) Report
December 4, 2024
