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."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"All of our models and metrics are temporary scripts. What matters is the rehearsal and how we keep rewriting the score together."
Jen van der MeerService design performs value
November 19, 2025
"Mapping jobs gives a view into behaviors and needs that may or may not include your solution."
Sean Fitzell Sarah Han Kayla FarrellCraft of User Research: Building Out Jobs to be Done Maps
March 12, 2021
"We are still designers, we’re systems designers, we’re organizational designers, even if we’re not making things."
Louis Rosenfeld Jose Coronado Rachel Posman Guneet Singh Crystal YanThe Bigger Picture: A Panel Discussion
October 23, 2019
"It’s not just about the customer experience but also the employee experience, and they must coincide."
Zariah CameronStreamlining an Inclusive Design Practice
October 3, 2023
"People eat with their eyes before they eat with their mouths — polish makes a big difference."
Dave Hoffer Joanne WeaverUX Job Search AMA #2 with Joanne Weaver and Dave Hoffer
May 21, 2025
"MJ Broadband saves our fingers some pain and some stress because we don’t have to take notes."
Louis Rosenfeld Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
March 27, 2023
"If we could do everything that was important, we would just do it."
Harry MaxPriority Zero: Some Things are More Equal than Others
June 9, 2016
"If these two voices don’t work for you, you can reach out at conferences@rosenfeldmedia.com."
Bria Alexander Louis RosenfeldOpening Remarks Day 2
March 26, 2024
"Politics and ego conflicts are inevitable and separate challenges that seriously impact merger integration."
Jorge ArangoMeeting of the Waters: Designing for Successful Inorganic Growth
August 12, 2021
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
How does introducing AI as a designer complicate the moral evaluation of deception in design?
What role does leadership buy-in play in creating a culture that supports inclusive service design operations?
How does philosophical ethics differ from empirical design research in methodology and thinking?