Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Customer-Centered Design Organizations
Gold
Thursday, June 8, 2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Share the love for this talk
Customer-Centered Design Organizations
Speakers: Peter Merholz
Link:

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."

Ask the Rosenbot
Sarah Fathallah
Lessening the Research Burden on Vulnerable Communities
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Yolanda Rankin
Black Feminist Epistemology as a Critical Framework for Equitable Design
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Rich Mironov
How Can Product Managers and UXers Help Each Other (and Why are Product Folks so Annoying Sometimes)?
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Aurobinda Pradhan
Introduction to Collaborative DesignOps using Cubyts
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Bria Alexander
Welcome
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Charlotte Vorbeck
Pipeline to Civic Design
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Leah Buley
Closing Plenary: The Crisis of Digital
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Fredrik Matheson
First-time users, longtime strategies: Why Parkinson’s Law is making you less effective at work – and how to design a fix.
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Kim Holt
A Salesforce Panel Discussion on Values-Driven DesignOps
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Saara Kamppari-Miller
Inclusive Design is DesignOps
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Ed Mullen
Designing the Unseen: Enabling Institutions to Build Public Trust
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Cara Maritz
The Art of Extrapolation
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Joerg Beringer
Scaling User Research with AI: Continuous Discovery of User Needs in Minutes
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Conference
Bas Raijmakers, PhD (RCA)
What Design Research can Learn from Documentary Filmmaking
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Nathan Curtis
Design Systems for Us: How Many One-Source(s)-of-Truth Are Enough?
2019 • DesignOps Community
Megan Kierstead
You Are a Badass at UX: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold

More Videos

Jeff Sussna

"At a certain level, the only way to know how your system will work is when people use it for real."

Jeff Sussna

What DesignOps Can Learn From DevOps

November 6, 2017

Carol Smith

"Data is a function of our history; it reflects priorities, preferences, and prejudices."

Carol Smith

Operationalizing Responsible, Human-Centered AI

June 7, 2023

Mark Interrante

"Culture is what you tolerate — if you tolerate rudeness or tardiness, it becomes part of who you are."

Mark Interrante

Collaboration Flows in Product Development

June 9, 2017

William Newton

"Executives first want to know what metric you will impact next quarter before approving big initiatives."

William Newton Jenny Chang

How to Lead With Data, and Without Data

June 7, 2023

Sam Proulx

"Including people with disabilities from day one builds a strong accessible foundation."

Sam Proulx

Accessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate

November 16, 2022

Shahrzad Samadzadeh

"Knowing your value as a person means not giving everything to situations that don't give back."

Shahrzad Samadzadeh

What Is My Value? Two Takes and Some Mistakes

January 8, 2024

Dantley Davis

"My dad told me very early on in my career that I had to work two times harder than anyone else to get the same things."

Dantley Davis

Leadership & Diversity—A Fireside Chat with Dantley Davis

September 17, 2020

Alla Weinberg

"Changing how we operate and relate to each other is the only thing in our control, regardless of organizational position."

Alla Weinberg

Healing Toxic Stress

September 23, 2024

Alnie Figueroa

"Our goal is to be AI fluent, not necessarily AI experts."

Alnie Figueroa

The Future of Design Operations: Transforming Our Craft

September 10, 2025