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You Decentralized UX for Good Reasons. Here's the Hidden Cost.

Join Outwitly's Speakers for a Special Roundtable at the 2026 Design Leadership Summit.

Most enterprises dismantled their centralized UX labs and pushed designers into product pods — often the right call for speed. But when shared standards and mentorship fall away, craft becomes uneven, and the UX function gets stuck taking orders. On Nov 18 in Toronto, a roundtable hosted by the Outwitly team will explore exactly this territory.  (With more topics being added!)

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Request an Exclusive 1:1 Meeting With Outwitly in Toronto

Request time directly with Outwitly during the Design Leadership Summit, to talk about what decentralization looks like on your team specifically.

 

*Subject to availability, for DLS 2026 attendees only.

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Beyond the Session: Stop By Our Booth to Enter Our Giveaway

Enter to win a free copy of Sara Fortier's new book, Design Research Mastery.

Design Research Mastery teaches teams to plan, execute and advocate for qualitative discovery research that builds stakeholder trust, transforms products and services, and pulls ROI.  

To get your copy, enter our in-person contest at the Outwitly booth during the 2026 Design Leadership Summit in Toronto.

 

Explore Sara Fortier's Book

Why This Roundtable Topic, and Why Now?

De-centralized UX departments are at risk of losing the connective layer that enables innovative craft and sparks business impact. Without an honest look at these structural changes to design in organizations:

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Craft Quality Drifts

 Without shared standards, each team solves the same problems its own way. Quality varies from pod to pod, and work gets repeated across teams. 

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Leaders Get Stuck in the Weeds

Design leaders end up filling gaps and reviewing day-to-day work instead of building the practice: its standards, its people, and its direction. 

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Designer Growth Stalls

 Designers embedded alone in product pods have no one at their level to learn from and no clear path forward, so skills plateau and the bench never deepens. 

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UX Influence Plateaus

 When design is spread thin across pods, it gets treated as an order-taking function rather than a voice in what gets built. 

Want to learn more about Outwitly & our speakers before the event?

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