Resilient Enterprise Design
Summary
Key Insights
-
•
Enterprise design must account for complex organizational contexts, not just individual user happiness.
-
•
Resilience in design means creating systems that flex and adapt under stress rather than breaking.
-
•
Customization is essential in enterprise software for companies to express their brand, culture, and workflows.
-
•
Loss of design control due to device variety and user customization requires influence over user behavior rather than strict enforcement.
-
•
Design principles are crucial to reduce indecision and provide a clear framework for decision-making in complex projects.
-
•
Prioritizing clarity over consistency can lead to better user experience outcomes.
-
•
Successful platforms often start by solving specific, concrete problems before generalizing widely.
-
•
Design systems function as living products that maintain consistency, flexibility, and scale across an ecosystem, including users.
-
•
Making it significantly easier to do the right thing drives adoption and behavior change in design.
-
•
Modeling real-world scenarios and anticipating customization scenarios helps create resilient, flexible enterprise applications.
Notable Quotes
"In the enterprise, it’s really about make me effective taking into account non-user personas as well as the individual."
"My boss might be looking over my shoulder and see nothing but red and think I’m not doing my job."
"Designing for the real world means dealing with practical constraints and making refinements in the face of compromise."
"We’re really passionate about our craft but we’re not in control — that’s a shared hallucination we must give up."
"If you design for everyone, no one is satisfied — start with specific solutions then generalize."
"The highest paid person’s opinion, or HIPPO, often makes decisions in the absence of principles and insights."
"Make it difficult to create ugly presentations — make it ten times easier to do the right thing."
"What happens when a user customizes the UI? Does the experience break? This is the question to ask."
"A style guide is an artifact, but a design system is a living, funded product with a roadmap serving an ecosystem."
"Resilient design needs to bend without breaking — to survive stresses while still delivering value."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"The ethics in community design are critical — emotional damage can be severe if mishandled."
James LangIf you can design an app, you can design a community
May 22, 2025
"Hiring people you want to design for is a powerful way of shifting power and valuing lived experience."
Sarah Auslander Betsy Ramaccia Gordon RossInsights Panel
November 18, 2022
"Backcast from preferred or risky futures to start thinking about what we need to do today to get there or avoid that outcome."
Sarah GallimoreInspire Progress with Artifacts from the Future
November 18, 2022
"Enterprise UX is really hard because, in addition to designing for products, we also design for our own change and the change our colleagues navigate."
Boon Yew ChewMaking Sense of Systems—and Using Systems to Make Sense of the Enterprise
June 6, 2023
"Amy Tibido used to call what I was doing dusting the content — tidying the words on the surface without solving the underlying problem."
Jonathon ColmanHow to Maximize the Impact of Content Design
January 8, 2024
"Use sticky notes with different colors and shapes to make the session more accessible and fun."
Emilia Åström Jim KalbachUnlock Your Team’s Intelligence with Collaboration Design
June 9, 2022
"The cultural context can dramatically change how long data remains relevant or when it expires."
Iulia CornigeanuQuantQual Book Club: Small Data
March 8, 2024
"100% of people responded to our care kits offer and wrote back about their experience. That sparked community connection during isolation."
Michelle MorrisonCulture Design
May 21, 2020
"Leading indicators include behavioral impacts like asking user-centered questions and gathering user feedback early and often."
Andrew WebsterScaling Design Capability: How Involved Should You Be?
September 30, 2021
