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
"Innovation programs can be tiring when you have a day job and constant change fatigue; you need a source of energy to push through."
Steve BatyBreaking Out of Ruts: Tips for Overcoming the Fear of Change
June 9, 2016
"There are values that have really stood out to us together: evolving, relational, decolonized, life centered, healing, equitable."
Sarah BrooksTheme 3 Intro
December 10, 2021
"Every output should have at least three source links, almost like citations in a research paper."
Savannah CarlinDon't botch the bot: Designing interactions for AI
June 4, 2024
"After holding a warm cup of coffee, people perceive others as more trustworthy and engaging."
Daniel GloydDesigning Warmth
February 26, 2025
"Embedding design from the system into product code without using system code leads to irregular quality and durability issues."
Nathan CurtisDesign Systems for Us: How Many One-Source(s)-of-Truth Are Enough?
January 17, 2019
"Design ops isn’t rocket science, but between us it might actually be harder."
John Calhoun Rachel PosmanMeters, Miles, and Madness: New Frameworks to Measure the (Elusive) Value of DesignOps
September 24, 2024
"Knowledge creation, distribution, application, and evaluation form a reusable circular process, not a linear one."
Alëna IouguinaDesigning Systems at Scale
November 7, 2018
"A developer pretending to be a product manager is not reliable participant data."
Leisa ReicheltThe Five Dysfunctions of Democratized Research at Scale
March 30, 2020
"Including people with disabilities from day one builds a strong accessible foundation."
Sam ProulxAccessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
November 16, 2022
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
How can play be integrated seamlessly into traditional workshops to avoid seeming frivolous?
What practical advice does Tara give for teams of one considering AI moderation to scale qualitative research?
How does Dana describe the process and challenges of transforming large, bureaucratic organizations toward human-centered design?