Summary
What is resilient enterprise design, and how can you incorporate it into your own enterprise organization? Craig Villamor is the VP of Product Experience & Design at AppDynamics and he talks about applying context and practicality to enterprise UX design to build resiliency.
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
"Preparation is key: pilot studies and a data analysis plan before launching ensure data quality and study success."
Amelia ColeData-Prompted Interviews
December 17, 2021
"Product telemetry and customer data bring the stories to life in aggregate and help prioritize engineering focus."
Ross SmithBreaking Barriers with Empathy
June 9, 2017
"Should you separate design from code? In some multi-framework environments, yes, it makes sense."
Nathan CurtisDesign Systems for Us: How Many One-Source(s)-of-Truth Are Enough?
January 17, 2019
"Repetition, representation, and association are the keys to great theater and great product development."
Adam ThomasSurvival Metrics – Making Change in a Fast, Data-Informed, and Politically Safe Way
December 6, 2022
"There are lots of little mushroom patches of design sprouting up, but they're disconnected and not sharing."
Michael LandEstablishing Design Operations in Government
February 18, 2021
"Building a portfolio of talks, refreshed over time, lets you keep evolving and sharing your ideas in different formats."
Louis Rosenfeld Jemma Ahmed Christian Crumlish Uday Gajendar Chris GeisonCoffee with Lou #3: What Makes for a Successful UX Conference Presentation?
May 2, 2024
"Admitting you’re wrong is the most efficient way I know of building trust."
Dan WillisEnterprise Storytelling Sessions
June 14, 2018
"Watch your language; terms like 'that's so lame' can be exclusionary or offensive."
Reginé GilbertAsking the Right Questions: Life, Hope and Moving Forward During the Pandemic
June 10, 2022
"We fundraised to cover Tatiana’s salary for three months so she could launch this project very quickly after the war started."
Xenia Adjoubei Sean BruceEmpowering Communities Through the Researcher in Residence Program
March 29, 2023
