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
"The pod system gave leads more credibility and leadership opportunities while supporting junior growth."
Sarah Kinkade Mariana Ortiz-ReyesDesign Management Models in the Face of Transformation
June 8, 2022
"What's weak feedback? Vague, off target, or late stuff like make it pop or opinions with no owner or next step."
Vanessa VarinFeedback: The Other F-Word
September 10, 2025
"It pains me to say, one of the tools they were using was MS Paint."
Elena Naids Liza McRuerThe Power of Difficult Conversations: A Case Study on How We Introduced Design Ops in the Federal Government Space
October 2, 2023
"When was the last time that you felt stuck? The one where you feel a sense of being stuck trying to understand something."
Abby CovertStuck? Diagrams Help
October 27, 2022
"A shared understanding of how you got here creates a sense of purpose, not just urgency."
Alastair SimpsonDebunking the Myths of Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration
October 24, 2019
"Each first take was the only take, which got pressed on the album."
Jim KalbachJazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
June 4, 2019
"Context management lets you tell the system what to look at, whether it’s files, folders, or highlighting specific image regions."
Luke WroblewskiDesigning AI Applications
March 5, 2026
"We encourage you all to be your own heroes and connect your own documents."
Jon Fukuda Ellie KryslDesign Planning and Management Support
October 3, 2023
"You have to learn to read the room and understand what drives the people you’re working with to build coalitions."
Mariah Hay Marina Martin Husani Oakley Eduardo OrtizBUILD: Discussion
June 14, 2018
