Peter Merholz has worked at the intersection of design, technology, and humans for over 25 years. Currently, he’s an independent consultant focused on improving the effectiveness of design teams. His clients include JP Morgan Chase, Contentsquare, The New York Times, Roblox, and Target.
He co-founded the user experience consultancy Adaptive Path in 2014, before serving as a design executive at Groupon, OpenTable, Capital One and Kaiser Permanente. Peter co-wrote Org Design for Design Orgs, still the premier book on building in-house design teams, and co-hosts Finding Our Way, a podcast on design leadership.
Peter is Lead Lecturer for Elevating Your Design Team.
What excites you most about teaching at the iF DESIGN ACADEMY?
Being able to engage with such a diverse student body, spanning the globe, representing a vast variety of industries, and across the range of professional design practices.
Why is your course especially relevant for design leaders right now?
Design leaders are often unaware of how the internal setups of their team affect the quality and impact of what they produce. This course "pulls back the curtain" to reveal the hidden organizational architecture that's necessary for a design team to conduct good work in a sustainable fashion.
What is your teaching philosophy?
I'll come out and say it: I LOVE FRAMEWORKS. I focus my teaching on practices and principles that enable your success, whatever the context is you're operating within. I also recognize that I don't have all the answers, and use our live session time to draw upon the collective wisdom of the group to support one another.
What personal career experiences will you bring to this course, and how will participants benefit from them?
A decade ago, I co-wrote what is still the only book dedicated to this subject, Org Design for Design Orgs. Since then, I have worked with a variety of companies, from startup to massive enterprise, across countless industries (financial services, medical device, retail, food service, enterprise software, etc.) to help them elevate the effectiveness of their design teams.
How did you choose the guest experts for this course, and how will participants benefit from their experience?
Our guest experts are meant to reflect the diversity of the student body I described in the first question. Drawn from regions across the world, they have experience in design leadership and design operations, across financial services, retail, enterprise SaaS, and consumer electronics, with expertise in design for software, hardware, and brand.