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
"Captions were once an assistive technology for a tiny subset but are now widely used."
Samuel ProulxDesigning beyond caricatures: Embracing real, diverse user needs
December 4, 2024
"Good designers understand you can’t design what you don’t understand."
Prayag NarulaHow to Empower Your Designers to Do Good Research – And Why You Want To
June 10, 2022
"We’re often given solutions to build instead of problems to solve, so we’re completely outside of providing what IT is hired for."
Kit Unger Jackie Ho Veevi Rosenstein Vasileios XanthopoulosTheme 2: Discussion
January 8, 2024
"The last thing you want to do is get it right and end up with it being wrong."
Harry Max Jim MeyerPrioritization for Leaders (2nd of 3 seminars)
June 27, 2024
"Staying in low fidelity throughout this early concept development phase allows for really strict focus on the problem slash solution space."
Billy CarlsonTips to Utilize Wireframes to Tell an Effective Product Story
June 6, 2023
"Evan actually spent less than 15 minutes on the essay, and instead of working on homework, he was writing a letter to his significant other back home in Detroit."
Sarah GallimoreInspire Progress with Artifacts from the Future
November 18, 2022
"Walking long distances for water was also a way for village women to bond and share news, not just a chore."
Alba VillamilStereotyped by Design: Pitfalls in Cross-Cultural User Research
March 30, 2020
"If you don’t have a little earthquake every now and then, you have a real big one after a while."
Christian Crumlish Wendy Johansson Rich Mironov Aditi Ruiz Adam ThomasAfternoon Insights Panel
December 6, 2022
"Design is an intention for change, not just a solution handed off to engineering."
Dolly ParikhExit Interview #7: Journey of a Social Entrepreneur
May 21, 2026