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
Emily Lessard
RFPs Without Tears: Writing Inclusive RFPS that Don't Scare Away Talent
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Ariel Kennan
Theme 2 Intro
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Carl Turner
You Can Do This: Understand and Solve Organizational Problems to Jumpstart a Dead Project
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Sha Hwang
The First Fifty Years of Civic Design
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Denise Jacobs
Interactive Keynote: Social Change by Design
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Mark Boulton
Ops without Designers
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Alana Washington
(Remote) Service Design: A Transformation Case Study
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Zen Ren
Taking Inspiration from Instructional Design for Research
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Aras Bilgen
Research Democratization: A Debate
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Matt LeMay
You Don’t “Get” Anyone to Do Anything
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Catt Small
What's Next for ICs: Exploring Staff and Principal Designer Roles
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Emily DiLeo
Stronger Together: Lessons Learned from UX Research Ops
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Sara Asche Anderson
Not Your Ordinary Re-Brand: Design's Path to Driving Customer Obsession at Best Buy
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Steve Baty
Breaking Out of Ruts: Tips for Overcoming the Fear of Change
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Josh Clark
Sentient Design: New Design Patterns for New Experiences (3rd of 3 seminars)
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Wendy Johansson
Design at Scale: Behind the Scenes
2021 • Enterprise Community

More Videos

Joanna Vodopivec

"Inviting other teams into research sessions lets us triangulate findings by combining interviews, observations, and focus groups."

Joanna Vodopivec Prabhas Pokharel

One Research Team for All - Influence Without Authority

March 9, 2022

Louis Rosenfeld

"My husband told me to Pace and Brace—I was pushing too hard and burnt out within a year and a half."

Louis Rosenfeld Lashanda Hodge Senongo Akpem Chris Hodowanec

Becoming a Civic Designer: Making the Move from Private to Public Sector

November 17, 2022

Bria Alexander

"If you want to invite a friend or colleague, the sponsor sessions are free and awesome to attend."

Bria Alexander

Day 3 Welcome

September 25, 2024

Uday Gajendar

"You don’t need to take notes. We want you to pay attention and not be distracted."

Uday Gajendar Louis Rosenfeld

Day 2 Welcome

June 5, 2024

Sam Proulx

"More ways to contact support—chat, email, phone—are essential because different disabilities require different options."

Sam Proulx

Online Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience

June 7, 2023

Russ Unger

"Day one is a commencement, a graduation from candidate to employee, not a paperwork slog."

Russ Unger

Onboarding: The Ecosystem, not the Afterthought

November 7, 2017

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

Josh Clark

"Characters live at the extreme of radically adaptive AI—they react in the moment and follow the user’s lead."

Josh Clark Veronika Kindred

Sentient Design: New Postures for AI-Mediated Experiences (2nd of 3 seminars)

January 29, 2025

Dantley Davis

"Ownership needs to be shared. The craft of making is similar to raising a child — it takes a village."

Dantley Davis

Leadership & Diversity—A Fireside Chat with Dantley Davis

September 17, 2020