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
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Enterprise software must balance user happiness with broader workplace constraints like bosses, culture, and legal requirements.
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Removing normal 'green' statuses in UI can harm user reputation and perceived competence, even if it seems simplifying.
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Customization is essential and a must-have in enterprise software, reflecting unique company cultures and workflows.
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Designers have largely lost control over exact user experiences due to device diversity and user-driven customization.
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Resilient design requires building flexibility that lets applications bend without breaking under stress or user modifications.
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Design principles, when prioritized and clear, reduce decision indecision debt and help quiet highest-paid-person opinions.
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Platforms should start by solving specific problems at the app level, then generalize to ecosystem-wide solutions.
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Design systems are living products with roadmaps and backlogs that serve diverse stakeholders including users.
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Making it at least 10 times easier to do the right thing is critical for changing user behavior, as Steve Jobs insisted.
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Publishing and supporting design guidelines openly helps ecosystem participants build better, consistent experiences.
Notable Quotes
"If you make a gross oversimplification, designing for the consumer is about making that individual happy."
"My boss might be looking over my shoulder while I'm working and see nothing but red, thinking I'm not doing my job."
"Designing for the real world means dealing with practical constraints and making refinements despite compromise."
"We have to give up the shared hallucination that we have control over presentation across devices."
"When users have control over the experience, the things they build will often surprise you, sometimes making you cringe."
"If your design principles don't drive decisions, you should rework them until they do."
"If you design for everyone, no one is satisfied."
"A design system is a living funded product with a roadmap and backlog serving an ecosystem."
"Make it difficult to create ugly presentations."
"We need to make it at least ten times easier to do the right thing."
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