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

  • Standardization is crucial for effective governance, drawing lessons from the Great Baltimore Fire.

  • Digital governance focuses on decision-making roles within organizations rather than merely workflow processes.

  • Organizations often struggle with defining who is responsible for digital strategies and policies.

  • Governance frameworks should be designed intentionally to facilitate collaboration rather than stifle creativity.

  • The concept of digital safety must be defined and measured to ensure accountability in online practices.

  • User feedback is valuable but should follow an initial focus on internal alignment and governance structure.

  • The complexity of digital governance involves managing both organizational biases and external vendor relationships.

  • A successful governance framework must account for organizational maturity and adapt over time.

  • Inclusivity in digital design is not just ethical but essential for user experience and community engagement.

  • Generosity in sharing knowledge and solutions can enhance the culture within the digital domain.

Notable Quotes

"At the end of the day, we're trying to drive down a shared sense of collaborative, sensible standards."

"People showing up for a fire that they couldn't really have the tools to put out is like how we feel about the internet now."

"Governance is about decision making, not just about who gets to approve what content."

"It's all in the workflow; it’s not just about the tool you use, it's how you design the process."

"Governance frameworks can facilitate whatever an organization wants to do."

"We are the ones that are actually going to fix this problem because we are it."

"Every bad thing that can happen in the real world can now happen on the internet, but every good thing can as well."

"Can we think about making things safer and safer as we scale and mature these disruptive technologies?"

"It's not about just what you're creating; it's about ensuring that the system supports consistent quality across all outputs."

"It’s a culture of inclusion that we should foster in the digital domain, reflecting the generosity of our collective efforts."

More Videos

Sheryl Cababa

"It's about extending your mindset into interconnectedness, causality, and wholeness."

Sheryl Cababa Alexis Oh

Thinking in systems to address climate with Sheryl Cababa

June 12, 2024

Louis Rosenfeld

"The next level will be using LLMs to interpret existing documentation and serve it up meaningfully."

Louis Rosenfeld Billy Carlson Jon Fukuda Maria Taylor

How AI will Change DesignOps Tooling

October 3, 2023

Kelly Dern

"If you do not intentionally, deliberately, and proactively include, you will unintentionally exclude."

Kelly Dern

AI as a Design Partner: How to Get the Most Out of AI Tools to Scale Your Process

October 3, 2023

Ariel Kennan

"The roles of who is designing are continually shifting in important ways."

Ariel Kennan

Theme Two Intro

November 17, 2022

Dave Malouf

"Design Ops is still defining its role just as UX designers evolved from visual designers to product designers."

Dave Malouf Meredith Black Farid Sabitov

The Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 1)

February 17, 2022

Sarah Rink

"If we can't do remote, that shouldn't mean we have to do it; context is crucial."

Sarah Rink

Remote User Research: Dos and Don'ts from the Virtual Field

June 11, 2020

Sam Proulx

"If you want to test accessibility features on mobile, they're right there; there's nothing to install."

Sam Proulx

Mobile Accessibility: Why Moving Accessibility Beyond the Desktop is Critical in a Mobile-first World

September 8, 2022

Wyatt Hayman

"We initially set up panels in ten different markets with a focus on proportionality."

Wyatt Hayman

Global Research Panels

August 8, 2020

Elizabeth Churchill

"The social dynamics of technology adoption play a critical role."

Elizabeth Churchill

Exploring Cadence: You, Your Team, and Your Enterprise

June 8, 2017