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
"I am so glad to be part of this new design ops community and wish you all the best of success."
Stephen PollardClosing Keynote: Getting giants to dance - what can we learn from designing large and complex public infrastructure?
November 7, 2017
"I was doing all the things, and it wasn’t sustainable."
Edward CuppsThe Principal Path: Journeying from Management to Individual Contributor
June 11, 2021
"Follow-up questions missed opportunities to probe deeper or were confusing, and participants had to repeat themselves."
Tara TresselInvestigating qualitative depth of AI-moderated interviews
March 10, 2026
"Web compatibility idiosyncrasies are not widely documented or officially communicated; people learn through word of mouth or trial and error."
Sharon BautistaTime to Make the Donuts: How User Research Helped Bridge Disparate Teams
January 8, 2024
"The insight and research community had such a hunger to keep growing and evolving to better amplify the voices of the people we seek to understand."
Jemma AhmedTheme 2 Intro
March 10, 2022
"Enterprise UX is really hard because, in addition to designing for products, we also design for our own change and the change our colleagues navigate."
Boon Yew ChewMaking Sense of Systems—and Using Systems to Make Sense of the Enterprise
June 6, 2023
"Having a narrative and a point of view about how you deliver value is key in interviews."
Louis RosenfeldCoffee with Lou
January 11, 2024
"Over-researching vulnerable populations repeats colonial patterns of extracting trauma without care."
Matt Bernius Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Aditi Joshi Alba VillamilLearnings from Applying Trauma-Informed Principles to the Research Process
March 10, 2022
"The end of history illusion is that we think we're done evolving, but we vastly underestimate future change."
Dean BroadleyNot Black Enough to be White
January 8, 2024
