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
"Some old fashioned solutions bring new problems for Istanbul."
Onur Kocan Ayhan EnsiciUnderstanding the Strategy for Civic Design in a Complex City: Istanbul
November 16, 2022
"This is a moment to rethink identity beyond UX and get creative with income streams and career paths."
Corey Nelson Amy SanteeLayoffs
November 15, 2022
"Infinite scroll is behavioral cocaine sprinkled all over our interfaces, triggering dopamine hits that keep us endlessly scrolling."
Mandy DrewWhat Role(s) Can Research Play in Responsible Design?
March 11, 2021
"We turned feelings into data—feeling better is a valid success metric."
Dianne QueReal Talk: Proving Value through a Scrappy Playbook
October 23, 2019
"A large organization’s security protocols make AI adoption slower and more complex than in smaller groups."
Jon Fukuda Amy Evans Ignacio Martinez Joe MeersmanThe Big Question about Innovation: A Panel Discussion
September 25, 2024
"Building generative AI tools is not scary, it’s just very different from the last 20 years of building products."
Peter Van DijckBuilding the Rosenbot
June 4, 2024
"Start somewhere simple, start early, include the right voices, and build foundational components you’ll reuse over and over."
Sarah Sgarlato Pierini Kevin NewtonFrom Passion to Execution: A Story of Evolving Research Maturity at LinkedIn
September 9, 2022
"Make a case to hire people who are product agnostic to connect where products intersect in the rider journey."
Kristin TaylorBuilding Bridges Across Organizational Silos
November 18, 2022
"I’ve been using screen readers for 30 years and accessibility has always been a passion of mine."
Sam ProulxSUS: A System Unusable for Twenty Percent of the Population
December 9, 2021