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
"The insider-outsider thing is kind of an artificial separation because many of us go back and forth between those roles."
Dan WillisTheme 3: Intro
January 8, 2024
"Recruiting diverse partners takes time and effort, and we are actively building programs to include people with diverse abilities."
Tracy McGoldrickIBM User Experience Program—The What, Why and How
October 15, 2021
"Engineers started questioning old assumptions and product wasn’t just adjusting roadmaps, they were reframing decisions around user needs."
Sean McKayCoexisting with non-researchers: Practical strategies for a democratized research future
March 11, 2025
"Start with trust by default; most people won’t disappoint you and will deliver responsibly."
Ana FerreiraDesigning Distributed: Leading Doist’s Fully Remote Design Team in Six Countries
January 8, 2024
"Knowing generally where you’re going is not the same as having clearly articulated goals, objectives, and measurements for success."
Megan Nipe Lyndsay BoothHuman-Centered Design for Engagement: Maturing from Newsletterville to Personalized, One-to-One Messaging
December 8, 2021
"The design of our systems should make room for messy, complicated human realities, not just positive illusions."
Deanna ZandtThe Unspoken Complexity of “Self-Care” with Deanna Zandt
July 21, 2022
"Redesigning decision making means teams should have the autonomy to recommend pivot, shelve, or proceed earlier."
Jen CardelloStandardizing Product Merits for Leaders, Designers, and Everyone
June 15, 2018
"You need to know your limits on how far you’re willing to exert influence and your energy investment."
Joshua GravesWe Need To Talk: Navigating Conversations with Your Boss (Part 1 of 3)
April 14, 2025
"Understanding culture means looking at a spectrum from global trends down to intimate communities."
Chloe Amos-EdkinsA Cultural Approach: Research in the Context of Glocalisation
March 27, 2023
