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
Nora Tejeda
Scaling Design Capabilities at BBVA Through a Self-service Design Model
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Alba Villamil
Stereotyped by Design: Pitfalls in Cross-Cultural User Research
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Randolph Duke II
War Stories LIVE! Randy Duke II
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Sheryl Cababa
Integrating Systems Thinking Into Your Practice as a Designer
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Joel Branch
Humanizing AI: Filling the Gaps with Multi-faceted Research
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Tutti Taygerly
Make Space to Lead
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Yasmine Khan
Checking Bias and Listening to Financially Vulnerable Americans
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Jenny Price
From Tradition to Transformation: Unlocking Startup Agility in a Legacy Enterprise
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Alla Weinberg
Design Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create It
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Carol Massa
Designing Health: Integrating Service Design, Technology, and Strategy to Transform Patient and Clinician Experiences
2024 • Advancing Service Design 2024
Gold
Taiye Akin-Akinyosoye
Amplifying voices and enhancing user research through group interviews
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks Day 1
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Maria Taylor
Knowledge is Power: Managing the Lifeblood of the Design Org
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Alexandra Schmidt
Why Ethics Can't Save Tech
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Sheryl Cababa
Day 2 Panel
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Gillian Salerno-Rebic
From Insight to Impact: How JourneySpark Used WEVO Pulse + Pro to Drive a 50% Lift in Ad Engagement
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold

More Videos

Dane DeSutter

"People who were gamers growing up are now the ones making the IP adaptations, ensuring authenticity."

Dane DeSutter Natalie Gedeon Deborah Hendersen Cheryl Platz

Beyond the Console: The rise of the Gamer Experience and how gaming will impact UX Research across industries

May 17, 2024

Anat Fintzi

"Two-thirds of our internal team had experienced a late or lost delivery, reflecting real customer frustration."

Anat Fintzi Rachel Minnicks

Delivering at Scale: Making Traction with Resistant Partners

June 9, 2022

Christian Rohrer

"Never put numbers on qualitative research findings; qualitative insights are about richness and why, not how many."

Christian Rohrer

Research Operations at Scale

November 7, 2017

Jessica Norris

"In women, ADHD can sometimes just be seen as being chatty or forgetful or clumsy, as opposed to restless and disruptive."

Jessica Norris

ADHD: A DesignOps Superpower

September 9, 2022

Dante Guintu

"The hardest lesson is being comfortable when you're uncomfortable and finding the best use of your time to create impact."

Dante Guintu

How to Crush the Talent Crunch

September 8, 2022

Sarah Rink

"If the research question requires deep context, remote probably won’t do."

Sarah Rink

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

June 11, 2020

Dan Willis

"Designers wandering the halls won’t survive without a safe space made up of roles, processes, and infrastructure."

Dan Willis

Filling the Void

November 7, 2018

Rachael Dietkus, LCSW

"There is a synergy between design and social work values that gives trauma-informed design its meaning and purpose."

Rachael Dietkus, LCSW

Trauma-Responsive Design: Reimagining the Future of Design Now

December 10, 2021

Emily Danielson

"Disasters aren’t just big front page events, they include minor crises like loss of a loved one or housing insecurity."

Emily Danielson

“I mean, I can lift a shovel”: Design Skills in Disaster Response

June 9, 2022