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
"You earn your seat at the table by championing excellent customer experience and rallying the project team behind it."
Karen PascoeDeveloping Experience Teams and Talent in the Enterprise
June 8, 2016
"Almost every kind of UX is happening in settings that have big challenges of scale and complexity that you see in enterprises."
Wendy Johansson Surya VankaDesign at Scale: Behind the Scenes
April 29, 2021
"Remote research lets us observe how people really use products in their own environments, mitigating the hawk-orn effect."
Mandy DrewWhat Role(s) Can Research Play in Responsible Design?
March 11, 2021
"If you do nothing, you cannot influence the future. Destination thinking shifts you from reactive to proactive future-oriented leadership."
Silke Bochat5 Antifragile Strategies for a DesignOps 2.0
September 23, 2024
"Statistical significance tells you if a change is likely not random, but it does not tell you if the change matters to your business."
Landon BarnesAre My Research Findings Actually Meaningful?
March 10, 2022
"For bigger decisions, having documented meetings was critical for transparency and defending choices later on."
Dr Chloe SharpUsing Evidence and Collaboration for Setting and Defending Priorities
November 29, 2023
"Pilots give you flexibility to mess up and figure out answers as you go, instead of needing all answers upfront."
Michelle ChinThe DesignOps Starter Kit
September 29, 2021
"I prefer to shine a light on others rather than be in the spotlight myself."
Kristin SkinnerTheme 2: Introduction and Provocation
January 8, 2024
"Standard design research looks for pain points, not harms, and harms often cannot be identified in typical user research."
Alexandra SchmidtWhy Ethics Can't Save Tech
November 18, 2022
