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
"We ran ambient workshops so folks could contribute on their own time and remove the friction of synchronous meetings."
Liam ThurstonWhy Your Design Team Is Quitting, And How To Fix It
June 10, 2022
"We used a 0.8 correlation threshold to tightly cluster similar survey responses, balancing cluster count and inclusion."
Edgar Anzaldua MorenoUsing Research to Determine Unique Value Proposition
March 11, 2021
"Building relationships with our internal partners may well be the highest leverage aspect of our jobs."
Bob BaxleyTheme 4: Intro
January 8, 2024
"You’re going to get the importance of empathy to the bottom line."
Bria AlexanderTheme Two Intro
September 8, 2022
"I finally started saying, I understand your budget, but I have one too, and I deserve to be paid."
Deanna ZandtThe Unspoken Complexity of “Self-Care” with Deanna Zandt
July 21, 2022
"Find your champion before you identify the problems to solve; this person helps navigate complex organizational alignment."
Mac SmithMeasuring Up: Using Product Research for Organizational Impact
March 12, 2021
"People get the findings, but they don’t viscerally get it; that’s where video clips make a huge difference."
Prabhas Pokharel Mayo NissenOrder and Chaos: New Ways of Collaborating on Synthesis and Storytelling
March 10, 2022
"Our library includes thousands of hours of videos created by over eleven hundred people."
Louis RosenfeldAbout the Rosenverse
March 15, 2026
"The conversation about design and product collaboration is happening privately inside businesses or from coaches and mentors."
Louis Rosenfeld Christian CrumlishOpening Remarks
November 29, 2023