Everything is About to Change: Software as Material
Summary
It’s a wonderful time for UX people who work in enterprises. We’ve made huge strides—from greater acceptance to concrete impacts—and our opportunities seem endless. But don’t get too comfortable, as enterprises are on the cusp of a huge and disruptive change. A variety of trends are converging to make it increasingly cheap and easy to develop software. In effect, software is becoming a material, and what enterprises make from it is far more important than how we make it. UX people can sit by and watch as enterprises figure out what to make out of the new material of software. Or we can be smart and partner with developers to define the coming generation of products and services. Greg Petroff will help us understand thIs new materiality of software and the opportunities for UX people to increase their impact and relevance.
Key Insights
-
•
Software is becoming a material, blending architecture and UX principles to shape how we build digital experiences.
-
•
Machine learning advances exponentially, enabling systems to learn human-like patterns, drastically changing UX possibilities.
-
•
IoT growth enables systems to predict future behaviors through real-time data and analytics, creating new UX demands.
-
•
Compute costs are dropping, allowing powerful 'edge' devices that combine IoT and AI capabilities locally.
-
•
Blockchain will enable secure, trustworthy interactions across distributed systems, especially in IoT.
-
•
The new tech stack supports platform as a service with microservices, drastically increasing speed and modularity in software development.
-
•
Traditional PRDs are being replaced by small, iterative backlogs, emphasizing rapid cycles and continuous integration/deployment.
-
•
Context-first design, personalizing experiences based on user intent and environment, will dominate future enterprise UX.
-
•
Designers must become business-savvy and embrace abductive thinking to guide what to build and why in this uncertain landscape.
-
•
Designers have a critical role as teachers who train AI systems by embedding human cultural and behavioral insights into algorithms.
Notable Quotes
"Machine learning is moving so fast that systems can learn whole codgers of content and change how we think about experiences."
"Amazon Echo is the first technology my artist wife really loves because it's genuinely useful and gets smarter over time."
"The biggest security risk is human behavior, like plugging a USB stick into a copier, not nefarious hackers."
"The way we build software now is fundamentally different; it's just easier to write code using platforms and microservices."
"We’re entering a world where design is going to be core to strategy and where making will become thinking."
"No one knows how to cook with the new ingredients of technology yet, and that’s why we face ambiguity and uncertainty."
"In enterprise, we’re moving from systems of record, to systems of engagement, to systems of assets where context drives experience."
"Designers are great at juxtaposition—putting unrelated things together to create new possibilities that engineers may not see."
"If we don’t lead technology change, others will, and we want that change to be design-led and human-centered."
"Abductive thinking, or what if thinking, is a core capability designers bring to defining what to build and why."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Understaffing is consistent in design ops no matter where in the world you are."
Benjamin RealMaturity Models: A Core Tool for Creating a DesignOps Strategy
October 1, 2021
"Nothing about us without us."
Sam ProulxTo Boldly Go: The New Frontiers of Accessibility
June 10, 2022
"We must talk like business people, not just designers."
Stephen PollardClosing Keynote: Getting giants to dance - what can we learn from designing large and complex public infrastructure?
November 7, 2017
"Early involvement of product helps you frame the problem better and co-create a solution that others will buy into."
Catt SmallCraft a Vision that Actually Gets Shipped
April 30, 2026
"We’re the voice of the employee—we’re arbiters of truth, defenders of experience, and sometimes validators against manipulation."
Kristin WisnewskiMeasuring What Matters
October 23, 2019
"Paradigm shifts depend on how a problem is described and who controls the narratives and beliefs."
Meghan BausoneSystems Thinking and Design Innovation: Working with Leverage Points in Rural Maternal Health Systems
April 17, 2026
"The future of medicine will be written in algorithms if we let it."
Vincent BrathwaiteOpener: Past, Present, and Future—Closing the Racial Divide in Design Teams
October 22, 2020
"The iPhone launch was a remarkably compelling, magnetic, and beautiful case study for the power of design."
Doug PowellDesignOps and the Next Frontier: Leading Through Unpredictable Change
September 11, 2025
"Being nice and empathetic at the executive level is critical to get results and maintain trust."
Ted NewardTheme 4: Enterprise Organizational Journey
June 4, 2019
