The Merholz Agenda

A coincidence last week got me thinking about Front-end Developers in Design organizations, and, more broadly, non-designer roles in Design organizations.

One day, with a VP Design client of mine we discussed the state of front-end development in his org, and then the next day Ryan Rumsey shared his experience having front-end development in his org over the initial objections of engineering leaders.

So, should Front-end Development be located in UX/Design organizations, or in Engineering orgs? I think a lot about career paths and professional development, which has led to this simple heuristic for whether a sub-function should be in an organization: Could someone from that sub-function eventually be promoted into the head of that organization? If so, then the placement of the sub-function makes sense. If not, that's a sign to consider moving it elsewhere.

The overwhelming majority of UX/Design organizations are lead by people with design backgrounds, and there exists an implicit (and sometimes explicit) bias towards the design function, over research, content, etc. I always celebrate when people without design backgrounds lead UX/Design, such