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
"Researchers are not trained mental health professionals, so having referral paths is essential when issues arise."
Sarah FathallahLessening the Research Burden on Vulnerable Communities
March 30, 2020
"System models provide a human-readable level above the database, enabling stakeholder alignment on complex features."
Robert ReimannTaming Design Complexity with UX Models
June 8, 2017
"We’ve got you covered with notes, sketch notes, slides, and recordings so you can sit back, relax, and enjoy the show."
Bria Alexander Louis RosenfeldOpening Remarks Day 1
March 25, 2024
"If you don’t feel connected and you’re standing alone, the challenge looks much bigger."
Marc Fonteijn Ru ButlerIncrease your confidence, influence, and impact (through a Professional Community)
December 3, 2024
"Operations and customer experience are two sides of the same coin."
Sara ConklinExit Interview: 20 Years of Tech, One Very Big Bet, and a Lot of Heat Pumps
April 10, 2026
"If there isn’t safety and connection, you get a culture of transaction and silence that kills innovation."
Alla WeinbergDesign Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create It
September 8, 2022
"If design ops only serves designers, it risks silos; instead it must apply design thinking across R&D and product teams - Patrizia."
Bria Alexander Patrizia Bertini Peter Boersma Jon Fukuda Dave Malouf Theresa Slate Changying (Z) ZhengCharting the future of DesignOps: A community workshop
April 18, 2024
"My manager says never ask me to take a day off, just tell me — it’s a huge cultural shift."
Allison SandersOperating with Purpose
January 8, 2024
"We were educated to minimize the value of our own practice and just reproduce what was done elsewhere."
Verónica Urzúa Jorge MontielThe B-side of the Research Impact
March 12, 2021
