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 way more cost effective to catch accessibility issues during the design phase than after shipping a product."
Amber KnablEmpowering innovation: The critical role of inclusive product development in the AI era
June 4, 2024
"It’s difficult to see the impact in digital technology, but workshops help teams visualize energy use and timing."
Tristin OldaniTurning awareness into action with Climate UX
January 16, 2025
"The agencies don’t often know what happens to their work after they deliver it unless they hear about it third hand years later."
Melinda BelcherInsider preview of Enterprise Experience 2020
May 28, 2020
"Researchers should seek out people who don’t look like us or think like us to check our biases before they shape products."
Mandy DrewWhat Role(s) Can Research Play in Responsible Design?
March 11, 2021
"The real juujitsu is how to get people to internalize insights, not just store them in decks or docs."
Jen Cardello Dr. Shadi Janansefat Alex WrightCurating insight: Strategies for integrating knowledge across research functions
March 11, 2025
"Excel is great, but it’s not scalable when managing design operations at scale."
Farid SabitovTheme Four Intro
September 9, 2022
"Confidence scores from the model are not a good idea because the model has no memory."
Peter Van DijckHands-on AI #1: Let’s write your first AI eval
October 8, 2025
"People we think are powerless often actually have a lot more power than we expect."
Jennifer Strickland Lesley-Ann NoelFireside Chat: How Design Addresses a World on Fire
March 18, 2022
"Power is a weird word. It's hard to relate to, and we aren't usually put in that position in our work."
Jess GrecoClaiming your power: Practical tools for amplifying your unique voice
March 13, 2025
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
In what ways did mindfulness and Reiki practice help Mary Lynn reassess her relationship with corporate UX work?
Why are job titles considered lagging indicators, and what does this imply for UX researchers today?
What are examples of AI failures that highlight the need for bias testing and regulation?