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 love the things—technology, design—but I really dislike the industry."
Cennydd BowlesExit Interview #2: Rediscovering the ethical heart of design
November 6, 2025
"One of the biggest problems in AI building is evolving your prompts and having a fast feedback loop."
Peter Van DijckHands-on AI #2: Understanding evals: LLM as a Judge
October 15, 2025
"Finance is the common language that all domains can speak, especially critical if you want a seat at the executive table."
Giff ConstableFinancial fluency for product leaders: AMA with Giff Constable
April 11, 2024
"Participants are not passive anymore. People don’t just want to be studied. They want to be active contributors to the knowledge we create."
Megan BlockerTheme 2 Intro
March 12, 2025
"Our design group is positioned under marketing, which informs who champions and promotes design within the company."
Sarah WilliamsA Framework for CX Transformation
June 11, 2021
"The traditional product metrics focus narrowly on the product or near-term impact but fail to capture what success means for the whole person."
Raven VealDark Metrics: Illuminating the Negative Impact of Digital Health Design
March 12, 2021
"I’ve started giving up on product management and focusing more on product strategy and senior executives."
Dr. Jamika D. Burge Steve Portigal Alba Villamil Sam LadnerThe Future of Research: Bridging the Gaps
July 29, 2021
"Storytelling and facilitation are becoming more important than just hard research skills for driving strategic product decisions."
Jen Cardello Dr. Shadi Janansefat Alex WrightCurating insight: Strategies for integrating knowledge across research functions
March 11, 2025
"Sponsor sessions are not sales pitches; they are content-rich and free to anyone who wants to attend."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
September 9, 2022
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
How can service design approaches support innovation decision-making in large public sector institutions like the OECD?
Why is establishing ownership and governance early critical for AI pilots to succeed?
What are effective ways to include people with disabilities in generative and usability research?