In a centralized organizational structure, usability professionals belong to one organizational unit (such as the Usability Department), and have their own usability manager. When project teams request usability assistance, one or more usability professionals work closely with the team during the project. This approach has several advantages, including opportunities for usability professionals to work across multiple projects and/or product lines, creating opportunities to leverage previous work and define standards. A centralized group can have a strong mix of skills and the ability to draw on support from colleagues, benefiting from specialized skills and sharing responsibilities during critical deadlines. A centralized group also provides opportunities for sharing of ideas and knowledge, encouraging professional growth (Borgholm & Madsen, 1999). However, it can make the usability professional appear to be an outsider on the development team.

In a distributed organizational structure, usability professionals are assigned to work on separate project teams and report to project manager. On many projects, this would mean only one usability professional per project. This approach has several advantages, including the ability of the development team to work together as a close-knit group. Staying with the project team from the beginning to end of the project may increase the chances of usability recommendations being implemented. For example, at Nortel Networks, after the usability group was decentralized, the human factors work became "more influential than it ever was when we had a separate organization for human factors specialists" (Lindgaard, 2002). However, this approach also has disadvantages in that it can isolate usability specialists, making them feel outnumbered. It can reduce opportunities for professional development, and miss opportunities to learn from experiences across projects.