Resilient Enterprise Design
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
"We wrote hypotheses as we believe this pain point matters, here’s how we test it, and how success looks."
Edgar Anzaldua MorenoUsing Research to Determine Unique Value Proposition
March 11, 2021
"There are no mistakes in jazz, just missed opportunities."
Jim KalbachJazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
November 6, 2017
"Naming is an exercise in power when what is being named has been historically erased."
Sarah FathallahLessening the Research Burden on Vulnerable Communities
March 30, 2020
"The Rose Bot has read everything—every piece of Rosenfeld’s knowledge—to help users access it."
Peter Van DijckBuilding the Rosenbot
June 4, 2024
"Be present, put devices down, turn off Slack notifications, and really engage."
Shelby SwitzerMaking Space for Community Knowledge-sharing in a Distributed World
December 10, 2021
"I was talking with a person who said I’m like an idea machine, a 24-7 idea machine. The reply was immediate. It isn’t, you get used up and spat out."
Dr. Karl JeffriesThe Science of Creativity for DesignOps
January 8, 2024
"Accessibility is a great example where OKRs can unify multiple product and design teams to a non-negotiable standard."
Bria Alexander Benson Low Natalya Pemberton Stephanie GoldthorpeOKRs—Helpful or Harmful?
January 20, 2022
"War gaming can be used by advocacy groups to test moves against policymakers and lobbyists before taking real-world actions."
Terry BuckmanWargaming (An Introduction)
August 10, 2023
"I didn’t understand the people who would be using it, so it was not received well and shut down quickly."
Matt StoneScaling Empathy, A Case Study in Change Management
June 11, 2021
