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
"Language can be vague, imprecise, and even contradictory, but the body can be a bridge to understanding."
Dane DeSutterKeeping the Body in Mind: What Gestures and Embodied Actions Tell You That Users May Not
March 26, 2024
"It’s okay to be goofy and have fun—creating space for awkwardness and playfulness helps engagement."
Shelby SwitzerMaking Space for Community Knowledge-sharing in a Distributed World
December 10, 2021
"Every time we communicate, we are sharing in that basic need for human connection."
Laura Gatewood Laine ProkayBeyond Buzzwords: Adding Heart to Effective Slack Communication
September 23, 2024
"Power is the ability to change another person’s reality."
George AyeThat Quiet Little Voice: When Design and Ethics Collide
November 16, 2022
"Changing the mindset takes time; like a big ship it takes hours to turn direction."
Prerna MakanawalaAchieving Balanced Design Consistency
June 9, 2021
"Please don’t chop off that engine until the new one is built because you are not the only one on this plane."
Laura KleinUnique challenges of innovation in enterprises
April 23, 2020
"Let the bird fly of hearts and minds. Don’t go chasing waterfalls; disrupt your organization with checklists."
Theresa Slate Erin RobertsonWhy Changing Hearts & Minds Doesn’t Work When Promoting DE&I Efforts, but Checklists Do
October 4, 2023
"Knowing your value as a person means not giving everything to situations that don't give back."
Shahrzad SamadzadehWhat Is My Value? Two Takes and Some Mistakes
January 8, 2024
"Think of a creative professional as an ideas athlete or a creativity Olympian."
Dr. Karl JeffriesThe Science of Creativity for DesignOps
January 8, 2024
