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
"Even teams with dedicated designers sometimes have gaps because designers get pulled to other priorities."
Audrey CraneShadow Design–Where Else is Design Happening in Your Organization?
April 20, 2023
"Our best selves hold and hear stories and hold power to account."
Jemma AhmedResearch at an inflection point: Adapting to a new era of collaboration, equity, and innovation
March 11, 2025
"Balancing risk and confidence helps teams move at the right speed for the right decisions."
Sean McKayCoexisting with non-researchers: Practical strategies for a democratized research future
March 11, 2025
"Optimization and using Slack a little better can make us gentler to each other."
Bria AlexanderTheme 1 Intro
September 23, 2024
"If implemented correctly, AI could have impressively positive impacts on inclusion and accessibility."
Amber KnablEmpowering innovation: The critical role of inclusive product development in the AI era
June 4, 2024
"Doing this tagging manually would have taken me around 10 hours of mind-numbing work."
Jorge Arango[Demo] How to re-categorize content at scale using LLMs
June 5, 2024
"The world really needs what researchers like you bring to the table."
Louis Rosenfeld Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
March 27, 2023
"We say yes when teammates are curious to try new methods and run pilots to see what works and what could improve."
Megan Blocker Amy Bucher Katie Hansen Ricardo Martins Nidhi Singh RathoreDay 2 Theme Panel
March 12, 2025
"Words are how we express our values, our philosophies, why we do what we do as designers and researchers."
Saara Kamppari-Miller"Prototype" vs "Prototype"--Breaking Down and Rebuilding Our Understanding of What We Do
October 24, 2019
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What advice does Steve Krug give for UX practitioners to future-proof their careers amid AI advancements?
What examples show that empathy emerges more from participation in research than from insights alone?
What were the main challenges Daniel and Justyna faced with fully autonomous AI feedback synthesis?