Software as Material—A Redux
Summary
Building on his seminal Enterprise UX 2016 keynote, Greg Petroff will revisit the meta-trends facing the product development community, and their implications for User Experience practitioners.
Key Insights
-
•
The shift from feature-driven to outcome-focused product development improves alignment and impact in enterprise software.
-
•
AI and generative tools are accelerating design and engineering work, enabling faster prototyping and solution discovery.
-
•
Cross-disciplinary boundaries between design, engineering, and product management are blurring, requiring new collaboration models.
-
•
Domain knowledge is essential for understanding complex enterprise problems but can also create cognitive biases.
-
•
Building strong relationships with cross-functional partners is vital for driving change and shared success.
-
•
Design systems and cloud-native architectures enable velocity and scalability in building modern software.
-
•
Societal issues like climate change and political polarization shape the context and responsibilities of designers.
-
•
The prediction frameworks designers used historically are less effective due to rapid technological and cultural changes.
-
•
Low-code and no-code tools will empower designers to prototype and configure solutions more directly, improving agility.
-
•
Designers must become cultural change agents advocating for growth mindsets and inclusive product cultures to maintain relevance.
Notable Quotes
"People are starting to catch on with the fact that design matters and that it’s maturely important to solving the problems we face."
"The best experiences are the ones that start to be relevant around who we are, recognizing where we are and what we’re trying to accomplish."
"There’s a new tech stack for software creation, all about cloud services and subscription-based business models."
"Prediction frameworks worked until the world changed; now our prior experiences aren’t always helpful for what comes next."
"The code starts to follow the outcomes and might even start to write itself at some level."
"We’re moving toward a contextual enterprise, where everything is relevant and adaptive to the user’s situation."
"We have to be advocates for growth mindset and process improvement because people fall back on old ways even in times of change."
"Take your cross-functional partners out to lunch. Build relationships because people don’t resist change; they resist what they don’t know."
"AI assistance in user research doesn’t supplant humans; it augments and assists by helping us sift through large volumes of data."
"If we deeply understand outcomes and advocate for impact, we’ll be the ones making real change happen in the enterprise."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"An insight is a finding plus an opinion — it’s the so what of it all."
Jon White Erin MayUnsticking Research for Better Information Flow
March 11, 2026
"I am what I do is a muscle memory that is really hard to undo."
Luz BratcherThis Is a Talk for Tired People
June 10, 2022
"Career managers develop close relationships with designers and advocate for staffing and promotions on their behalf."
Ignacio MartinezFair and Effective Designer Evaluation
September 25, 2024
"Design ops is not execution or tactical, it’s a leadership role that brings design thinking to the whole organization - Patrizia."
Bria Alexander Patrizia Bertini Peter Boersma Jon Fukuda Dave Malouf Theresa Slate Changying (Z) ZhengCharting the future of DesignOps: A community workshop
April 18, 2024
"When people start saying a page looks busy or cluttered, it's a strong shorthand indicating cognitive overload."
Michael WeirMixed Methods and Behavioural Science
May 26, 2023
"A good two-factor system offers multiple methods, like authenticator apps, calls, and texts, with generous timeouts."
Sam ProulxOnline Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience
October 3, 2023
"The autonomic nervous system is 500 million years old and doesn’t know the difference between organizational change and a lion attack."
Alla WeinbergPeople Are Sick of Change: Psychological Safety is the Cure
July 20, 2023
"If you don’t collect data on somebody, they become invisible and nobody should be invisible."
Amy Paris Danielle ThierryDelivering Equity: Government Services for All Ages, Languages, Sexual Orientations, and Gender Identities
December 9, 2021
"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
