Summary
Priya opens day two of Design at Scale by discussing the unique challenges faced when designing products for enterprise environments. She highlights the complexity of addressing multiple user archetypes, ensuring scalability, flexibility, security, performance, accessibility, and system integration. Priya notes that many enterprise design teams struggle with resource constraints and pressure to sacrifice quality for speed. She underscores the importance of corporate design maturity, pointing out that companies with strong design practices outperform competitors financially and in customer experience. Throughout the day, speakers will share practical methods, mindset shifts, and lessons on navigating rapid growth, low design maturity, and alignment to create impactful, user-centered products. Priya sets the stage for focusing on inspired solutions that elevate enterprise design beyond mediocrity.
Key Insights
-
•
Enterprise design requires solving complex problems across multiple user archetypes with differing goals.
-
•
Designing for scalability, flexibility, security, performance, and accessibility is essential in enterprise products.
-
•
Corporate design maturity correlates strongly with better financial results, customer loyalty, market share, and employee happiness.
-
•
Design teams in enterprises are often under-resourced and overwhelmed with demand, leading to compromised quality.
-
•
Quality is frequently deprioritized in product teams under pressure to ship faster, harming user experience.
-
•
Enterprise products must integrate smoothly within ecosystems of other complex systems.
-
•
Different levels of corporate and product design maturity create process and quality challenges.
-
•
Embedding design thinking into overall ways of working helps organizations perform better and innovate consistently.
-
•
Maintaining alignment and tapping into the creativity of the whole workforce helps deliver meaningful outcomes.
-
•
Focusing on people-centered design enables creation of inspired solutions that improve the world.
Notable Quotes
"We’re typically designing products to solve really complex issues."
"These products are often part of an ecosystem of other complex products."
"We need to design for scalability, flexibility, accessibility, security, and performance."
"Companies with high corporate design maturity perform better financially and have happier employees."
"Design teams often don’t have enough people to support everything being asked of them."
"Too often quality is the last priority and the first thing to go when teams are pressured to ship faster."
"Subpar experiences make it out into the world due to these pressures."
"Corporate design maturity is the level that businesses incorporate design thinking into their overall ways of working."
"We want to keep people at the center of our work to create inspired solutions that make the world better."
"The speakers will share hard-won lessons to help you navigate low corporate design maturity and rapid growth."
Dig deeper—ask the Rosenbot:
More Videos
"I hadn’t realized that we were both going to need that advice."
Randolph Duke IIWar Stories LIVE! Randy Duke II
March 30, 2020
"Keep your LinkedIn profile updated and compelling so you’re findable for passive job opportunities."
Corey Nelson Amy SanteeLayoffs
November 15, 2022
"Research is not as easy as putting on a shoe and just doing it; it requires careful consideration and alignment with imperatives."
Landon BarnesAre My Research Findings Actually Meaningful?
March 10, 2022
"Self-report is not the end all; people often don’t know why they behave certain ways, especially regarding automatic motivations like deeply ingrained mental models."
Amy BucherHarnessing behavioral science to uncover deeper truths
March 12, 2025
"Behavioral turbulence happens when flow breaks down, causing chaotic and unpredictable user interactions."
David SternbergUncovering the hidden forces shaping user behavior
July 17, 2025
"Processes are never perfect, but thoughtful testing limits disruption for your team."
Deanna SmithLeading Change with Confidence: Strategies for Optimizing Your Process
September 23, 2024
"The absence of empathy and understanding is causing much of the pain in design."
Jennifer StricklandAdopting a "Design By" Method
December 9, 2021
"Trying to do all things well can mean doing all things kind of not so great—specialization became necessary."
Rachel Posman John CalhounA Closer Look at Team Ops and Product Ops (Two Sides of the DesignOps Coin)
November 19, 2020
"Service design is 10% connecting the dots and 90% creating the conditions that bring those dots closer together."
Gina MendoliaTherapists, Coaches, and Grandmas: Techniques for Service Design in Complex Systems
December 3, 2024
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
How should teams manage the evolving overlap between roles caused by AI and new tools?
Why is it important to assign distinct roles to different AI agents when collaborating on a software project?
What best practices help sustain transformation efforts through governance, guidance, and stakeholder alignment?