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
-
•
Seven years ago, AI and IoT were emerging but hadn’t yet deeply impacted UX as they do now.
-
•
New societal factors like climate change, political polarization, and pandemic-driven complexity are now critical design considerations.
-
•
The shift to cloud-based, subscription business models demands UX focus on outcomes rather than output or feature count.
-
•
Contextual systems that deliver relevant, location- and situation-aware insights are becoming a key UX strategy.
-
•
The boundaries between design, engineering, and product management are blurring, enabled by tools like Figma and low-code platforms.
-
•
Deep domain knowledge increases UX impact but can also introduce biases that teams must acknowledge and address.
-
•
Focusing on top workflows and outcomes can dramatically reduce unnecessary features and align teams for faster delivery.
-
•
AI is becoming an essential collaborator, augmenting knowledge acquisition, prototyping, and user research rather than replacing humans.
-
•
UX professionals must become cultural change agents advocating for new ways of working and mindset shifts within organizations.
-
•
Strong interpersonal relationships across design, product, and engineering teams are crucial to successfully driving change.
Notable Quotes
"Design matters and it’s maturely important to solving the problems that we face, as a culture and as organizations."
"The arrival of real AI feels like an earthquake going on in enterprise software."
"The best experiences recognize who we are, where we are, and what we’re trying to accomplish in the moment."
"Systems of assets or context-based systems are becoming more and more relevant to delivering value."
"No one really understood the new ingredients of the tech stack back in 2016, but it’s getting better."
"Outcome magicians focus on the impact of what we build, not just the number of features delivered."
"We have to be cultural change agents because people fall back on the old ways if we don’t push for growth and new processes."
"English is becoming the new coding language, with AI-assisted engineering changing how we build."
"In many organizations, design is still not hierarchically at the right level to be seen as equal partners."
"Take your cross-functional partners out to lunch — be in relationship, and you can share the possibility of change."
Dig deeper—ask the Rosenbot:
More Videos
"Closing the distance means more than connecting with customers—it means connecting better across your own team."
Monty HammontreeThe Future of UX Research (Videoconference)
December 3, 2020
"There are never truly conflicting futures between donors and communities—your job is to find the bridge that unites them."
Liz EbengoThe Burden on Children: The Cost of Insufficient Post-Conflict Services and Pathways Forward
December 4, 2024
"It’s really powerful to leave question marks in wireframes to open the conversation with your presentation audience."
Billy CarlsonTips to Utilize Wireframes to Tell an Effective Product Story
June 6, 2023
"We found a disconnect: we get it, we feel it, but we’re not doing anything."
Saara Kamppari-MillerInclusive Design is DesignOps
September 29, 2021
"Leadership does not mean standing in front of a room. It means mentoring, influencing, and helping others grow."
Ian SwinsonDesigning and Driving UX Careers
June 8, 2016
"Where there’s life, there’s hope — failure teaches us, but resilience and rebuilding are even more meaningful."
Jonathon ColmanHow to Maximize the Impact of Content Design
January 8, 2024
"Our users like their old house—they don’t necessarily want to learn something new, they want trust and familiarity."
Maria SkaadenContinuous Design: One eye on the horizon and the other on the next wave
November 8, 2018
"You can tune AI writing so it's not just compliance, but really using principles for the right reasons because they're actually helpful."
Bryce Benton[Demo] AI-powered UX enhancement: Aligning GitHub documentation with USWDS at Austin Public Library
June 4, 2024
"You have to apply multiple perspectives to the data so you don’t oversimplify or misinterpret the patterns."
Marc FonteijnFirst Insights from the 2025 Service Design Salary(+) Report
December 4, 2024
