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
"If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist is hubris in medicine and science."
Kristen Honey"Let’s Talk About Data and Crisis”: Public Digital Service Delivery = Open Data + Human Centered Design
November 18, 2021
"We treated user research and journey mapping as non-negotiable basics, even when pressured for rapid delivery."
Magdalena ZadaraZero Hour: How to Get Far Quickly When Starting Your Digital Service Unit Late
November 16, 2022
"Maturity is not linear; the tanker company had a lot to learn from the speedboat, and vice versa."
John CutlerOxbows, Rivers, and Estuaries: How to navigate the currents of change (without burning out)
December 3, 2024
"There’s no breathing room for design to conceive and execute a delightful solution in an enterprise."
Sharbani DharBreathing Room for Delight
January 8, 2024
"Metrics become lagging indicators, consequences of what’s happening upstream in the customer experience."
Jill FruchterInconvenient Insights: The Researcher's Role is to Stay Curious
March 29, 2023
"The scoping of Canada’s COVID app protected people with new phones, but left vulnerable populations unserved."
Barb SpantonDoing Work That Matters: A Look Beyond The Idealistic Notion of 'Doing Meaningful Work'
June 10, 2022
"Leadership is a mode, not a title, and anyone can be a leader."
Nalini P. KotamrajuTwo Jobs in One: Being a “Leader who is a Researcher” and a “Researcher who is a Leader"
March 10, 2021
"Doing fewer things well and working at a natural pace improves quality and reduces burnout."
Rachael Greene Alison DavisBuilding a Design Ops Practice that Really Works (Most of the Time)
October 2, 2025
"Business is just people who may be working with design but don’t quite get how design helps them."
Francesca Barrientos, PhDYou Need Your Own Definition of Design Maturity
June 8, 2022