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
"We need more diversity at all levels because that’s where truly interesting perspectives and challenges come from."
Joi FreemanA New Vantage Point: Building a Pipeline for Multifaceted Research(ers)
March 30, 2020
"Our work as service designers is to help people see their own complex system more clearly, learn from conditions, and take the next right steps."
Jen BriselliLearning is the north star: service design for adaptive capacity
November 19, 2025
"We’re biologically wired to respond to intellectual challenges the same way as physical threats."
Sara LogelYour Colleagues are Your Users Too
March 29, 2023
"Aligning content to audience expectations requires understanding their intent through market research."
Andrew Custage Michael MallettThe Digital Journey: Research on Consumer Frustration and Loyalty
March 29, 2023
"If people are looking for lunatic asylum or Austin State Hospital, they should both be findable, but presented appropriately."
Bryce Benton[Demo] AI-powered UX enhancement: Aligning GitHub documentation with USWDS at Austin Public Library
June 4, 2024
"When the role of business changes, the mission and metrics must change to include societal impact."
Janaki KumarInnovate with Purpose
June 14, 2018
"We’re still at a nebula moment where defining what DesignOps truly is remains difficult."
Dave Malouf Patrizia Bertini Jon FukudaThe Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 2)
April 28, 2022
"Between February and March 2020, promoting the PTSD Coaching app led to a 65% increase in downloads."
Megan Nipe Lyndsay BoothHuman-Centered Design for Engagement: Maturing from Newsletterville to Personalized, One-to-One Messaging
December 8, 2021
"Artifacts didn’t happen if they’re not documented; they’re decision-making points in the product process."
Erika Kincaid Brenna Heaps Jessica TsukimuraConnecting the Dots: How to Foster Collaboration and Build a Strong Design Review Culture
June 8, 2022
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
How can user personas and scenarios be used to humanize technical discussions and maintain focus?
How can designers identify which parts of a system they can influence or should monitor using affordance mapping?
Why is competitiveness declining as a motivation in gaming and product design, according to Cheryl Platz?