Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Cleaning Up Our Mess: Digital Governance for Designers
Gold
Thursday, June 14, 2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Share the love for this talk
Cleaning Up Our Mess: Digital Governance for Designers
Speakers: Lisa Welchman
Link:

Summary

The Internet and Web have reached a tipping point. We’re now witnessing the surfacing of harmful patterns and norms that we designed—often unintentionally—into our products, services, and communities, and the world we live in. Designers who work in the enterprise are, like their peers in startups and big dotcoms, vulnerable and culpable and need to consider some big questions: How well do we manage our data? How inclusive are our development practices? How broadly and deeply do we think about the impact of what we build and deploy before we scale it for our customer base? We need to move forward with intent. We need to govern our digital spaces. A necessary first step towards that goal involves designers examining—with honesty and introspection—our role in the creation of what’s online. The World Wide Web is nothing more than the accumulation of what digital makers have put there. We made this mess, and we need to talk about how we are going to clean it up. Digital governance expert Lisa Welchman will reflect on how 25 years of passionate and agile web development got us where we are today, and the consequences of the lack of self-governance by the digital maker community. She will show us a path forward from this mess, outlining questions we can ask and steps we can take to govern better what we have created and what we will create in the future.

Key Insights

  • Digital governance is fundamentally about decision making and organizational responsibility, not just tools or workflows.

  • Many digital governance failures stem from unclear ownership of strategy, policy, and standards within organizations.

  • Collaborative governance involves multiple levels: core strategy teams, distributed content makers, working groups, and community contributors.

  • External vendors often deepen digital silos if not properly integrated into governance frameworks.

  • Governance can be designed to enable speed and innovation, not just control or restriction.

  • The internet and digital technologies undergo a lengthy maturation cycle similar to historic technologies like automobiles.

  • Algorithmic biases often reflect organizational biases; fixing algorithms requires fixing institutions.

  • Proactive digital safety can be conceptualized like crash-test dummies for online systems, focusing on inclusivity, morality, and safety.

  • Participation in internet and web governance organizations like W3C or the Internet Society is crucial but underutilized by digital professionals.

  • Generosity and sharing cultures, as exemplified by the development of the three-point seatbelt, are critical for progressing digital governance.

Notable Quotes

"People can have the same values and ideas but if you don’t tune them properly, you just don’t get what you want."

"Digital governance is about who’s supposed to make the decision, not what the decision is."

"Governance isn’t the byproduct of a project; digital is a system you have to design and iterate continuously."

"You can’t expect people to comply with standards if you don’t know who they are."

"Your external vendors may not have your organizational best interests at heart because it’s not their business model."

"Governance frameworks can facilitate whatever pace or style of work an organization wants."

"Every bad thing that can happen in the real world can now happen on the internet — and every good thing too."

"Human biases are the real problem behind algorithmic bias because organizations embed those biases first."

"We are the fix — everything online is made by people, so we can change it together."

"Governance participation isn’t optional if you want to avoid reactive impositions down the line."

Ask the Rosenbot
Chris Moses
Stretching the Definition of DesignOps with Product Development
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Brian Moss
What Does it Mean to be a Resilient Research Team?
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Savina Hawkins
Harnessing AI in UXR: Practical Strategies for Positive Impact
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Shipra Kayan
Emerging principles for using AI in Design: What the product design team at Miro has learned from deeply integrating AI in their workflow
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Joanna Vodopivec
One Research Team for All - Influence Without Authority
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
John Paul de Guzman
10k Screens Later: How We Became a Data-Driven Design Organization
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Victor Udoewa
Beyond Methods and Diversity: The Roots of Inclusion
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Jason Mesut
Unmasking Design Leadership: Navigating leadership without neglecting ourselves
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Kristin Skinner
Theme 2: Introduction and Provocation
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Stefanie Owens
Optimizing for Outcomes: Transformation Design in Systems at Scale
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Emily Eagle
Can't Rewind: Radio and Retail
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Sarah Williams
Verizon_A Framework for CX Transformation
2024 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Saara Kamppari-Miller
Theme Three Intro
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Alnie Figueroa
Teamwork: Strategies for Effective Collaboration with Other Program Management Teams
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Yasmine Khan
Checking Bias and Listening to Financially Vulnerable Americans
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Corey Long
Hiring in DesignOps: A Critical Study on How to Hire and Get Hired
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold

More Videos

Jackie Ajoux

"Learn your organization’s business strategy deeply to connect your work with strategic objectives."

Jackie Ajoux

Leveling-Up: A Single-Player’s Guide to the DesignOps Team-of-One

January 8, 2024

Sofia Quintero

"I didn’t want to be part of that as a founder, hacking attention just to fulfill engagement metrics."

Sofia Quintero

The Product Philosophy Behind EnjoyHQ

March 10, 2021

Josh Clark

"With bespoke UI, you don’t present every single path to the user; you let the right tool appear immediately for the job."

Josh Clark Veronika Kindred

Sentient Scenes and Radically Adaptive Experiences

June 11, 2025

Catherine Dubut

"In large organizations, soft skills are the hard skills—it's all about how you connect with humans and express your core values."

Catherine Dubut

Bridging Physical and Digital Spaces: Approaches to Retail Service Design

March 18, 2021

Kristen Honey

"We had to build the plane while we were flying it."

Kristen Honey

"Let’s Talk About Data and Crisis”: Public Digital Service Delivery = Open Data + Human Centered Design

November 18, 2021

Maria Giudice

"Before you accept a mission as a changemaker, ask yourself do you have a clear directive, champion support, and the right resources?"

Maria Giudice

Becoming a Changemaker by Leading with Design

March 29, 2023

Satyam Kantamneni

"The experience comes together when all systems and departments are synchronized in one place."

Satyam Kantamneni

Do You Have an Experience Vision?

March 23, 2023

Steve Portigal

"Historians say the past doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes."

Steve Portigal

Looking Back…to Look Ahead

March 26, 2024

Jane Davis

"Organizations that embed research into highest level decision making are the ones that innovate faster."

Jane Davis

Strategic Shifts and Innovations in User Research: Navigating Challenges and Opportunities

March 11, 2025