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
"It’s important to create a clear value proposition that ties your work to the larger organizational mission."
Jackie AjouxLeveling-Up: A Single-Player’s Guide to the DesignOps Team-of-One
January 8, 2024
"User testing for AI still means watching people use it, plus collecting analytics and running evaluations."
Peter Van DijckDesigning AI-first products on top of a rapidly evolving technology
June 10, 2025
"We do experiments not to make things work but to learn something new."
Dan WardFailure Friday #1 with Dan Ward
February 7, 2025
"Sponsor-led sessions are not sales pitches but packed with great content from real all-star UX professionals."
Louis RosenfeldWelcome / Housekeeping
June 7, 2023
"Every project and initiative we launched has been a Trojan horse navigating through dark matter."
Sofía Delsordo Kassim VeraPublic Policy for Jalisco's Designers to Make Design Matter
December 8, 2021
"I’d love a tool that combines research questions, assumptions, tests, and outcomes all in one place."
Andrea GallagherThe Problem Space
May 16, 2019
"Should service designers have a role in the long-term viability of the services they develop? Our answer is yes."
Laura Smith Tom GaylerEmbedding Service Design and Agile Practice within UK Planning Teams to Create Services that Last
December 3, 2024
"Respect, trust, and alignment helped us feel empowered and comfortable talking about anything."
Ruzanna RozmanGetting in Flow with Your Team
January 8, 2024
"I transitioned out of academia because I wanted to work faster and create immediate impact rather than slow, layered processes."
Clemens Janssen Jane DavisEfficiently Scaling Research as a Team of One
March 28, 2023
