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
"It depends was the most common answer to how do you know what you’re doing is working."
Rachael Greene Alison DavisBuilding a Design Ops Practice that Really Works (Most of the Time)
October 2, 2025
"DesignOps needs to work more horizontally to bridge silos between product, marketing, engineering, and research."
Dave Malouf Patrizia Bertini Jon FukudaThe Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 2)
April 28, 2022
"There's quantitative, qualitative, generative, evaluative data and methods like AB testing—it can be overwhelming."
Uday GajendarTheme Four Intro
June 6, 2023
"No need to take notes at this conference. We share notes, sketch notes, videos, and decks very quickly."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
October 4, 2023
"A team charter provides a rallying point and purpose, especially important during times like the pandemic."
Courtney Maya GeorgeScale Your Organization and Grow Your Designers
September 8, 2022
"We are just starting to do regular and frequent reporting across the entire design organization."
Sarah CoyleDesign and Analytics with Sarah Coyle
July 30, 2020
"Disability is a normal part of the human experience."
Sam ProulxAccessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
November 16, 2022
"Documentation your team will actually use, how to define and maintain a design ops roadmap, AI as a design partner."
Bria AlexanderTheme Two Intro
October 3, 2023
"It’s the individuals who choose whether and how they take advantage of the opportunities you create."
Tess DixonC'mon Get Happy
September 29, 2021
