Why Your Website Redesign Isn't Enough: The Case for Web Governance

Session Overview:

Organizations often turn to a website redesign when their digital presence becomes confusing, inconsistent, or difficult to maintain. A new Drupal implementation, updated visual design, or reorganized information architecture may provide meaningful improvements. However, a redesign alone cannot resolve unclear ownership, fragmented decision-making, competing departmental priorities, or dysfunctional content processes.

When those conditions remain unchanged, the same problems tend to reappear, even on a newly designed website.

This 45-minute session uses Indiana University Global as a case study in the relationship between organizational structure and digital experience. IU Global’s web presence developed over time across multiple departments and websites. As units merged and responsibilities shifted, their websites reflected that history. Content, navigation, branding, and ownership became increasingly fragmented, making it harder for users to understand IU’s global programs and services and harder for staff to maintain a coherent institutional presence.

The case study will trace that evolution and examine the challenges it created, including:

• Multiple websites representing closely related services and audiences
• Organizational changes that were never fully reflected in the digital ecosystem
• Duplicated, outdated, or competing content
• Unclear authority over content and website decisions
• Tension between centralized marketing goals and stakeholder expectations
• Internal processes that encouraged teams to focus on individual pages or departmental interests rather than complete user journeys
• Redesign efforts that improved the interface without changing the practices that produced the underlying problems

The session will then examine a web consolidation project that brought these sites and services into a more unified experience. Rather than treating consolidation as only a migration or redesign exercise, the project used it as an opportunity to establish a governance strategy designed to support the website after launch.

Attendees will see how governance can make responsibilities and relationships explicit by defining:

• Who owns the website and its content
• Who has authority to make different kinds of decisions
• How subject-matter experts, stakeholders, marketers, designers, developers, and content managers work together
• How content is requested, created, reviewed, approved, published, and maintained
• How disputes and competing priorities are resolved
• What standards content must meet, including expectations for accessibility, quality, consistency, and user-centeredness
• How teams evaluate whether the consolidated experience continues to meet user and organizational needs

The session will also discuss the effects of implementing governance: what changed in working relationships and decision-making, which challenges governance helped address, and which aspects required continued attention. Governance will be presented not as a static policy document or an additional layer of bureaucracy, but as an operating model that helps people make sustainable decisions about a shared digital platform.

Although the case study comes from a large higher-education institution, its lessons apply to Drupal teams in government, nonprofit, corporate, and other decentralized environments. Attendees do not need to be governance specialists. The session is intended for anyone who contributes to, manages, funds, or makes decisions about a complex website. This may include UX practitioners and information architects, content strategists, site managers, project and product managers, digital communications and marketing professionals, among others. The session will be especially relevant to attendees working in decentralized organizations where multiple departments or stakeholder groups share responsibility for a website. No specialized technical or governance experience is required.

By the end of this session, attendees will be able to:

1. Recognize when apparent design, content, or technology problems are symptoms of deeper organizational and governance issues
2. Explain why a redesign or Drupal migration cannot, by itself, resolve unclear ownership, competing priorities, and ineffective stakeholder relationships
3. Identify the core components of a practical web governance strategy, including roles, decision rights, workflows, standards, and accountability
4. Apply lessons from the IU Global consolidation project to websites operating across multiple departments, teams, or stakeholder groups
5. Identify opportunities to introduce governance before, during, or after a redesign so that improvements can be sustained over time

This is a new presentation and has not previously been delivered at another conference or event.
 

Session Outline:

• 0-4 minutes: Why redesigns fail to create lasting change
• 4-11 minutes: The evolution of IU Global's organization and web presence
• 11-18 minutes: Fragmentation, ownership, content, and stakeholder challenges
• 18-23 minutes: Why previous redesigns did not solve the underlying problems
• 23-30 minutes: The web consolidation project and its strategic approach
• 30-36 minutes: The governance model: roles, authority, workflows, and standards
• 36-39 minutes: Early effects, lessons learned, and continuing challenges
• 39-45 minutes: Attendee questions and discussion

Speaker Bio:

Rachel Wilken is a UX strategist and information architect who connects research, design, and organizational strategy to create accessible, user-centered digital experiences.

She has more than seven years of experience leading digital initiatives across higher education, corporate, government, and nonprofit environments. Her work spans UX and market research, information architecture, digital accessibility, web content strategy, project management, and user-centered design. She specializes in transforming complex information and stakeholder needs into intuitive digital systems that support both users and organizational goals.

Rachel is currently a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Library and Information Science within the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University Indianapolis. She also operates Rachel Wilken Design, an independent practice that brings research, strategy, and design together to solve real-world problems. In fall 2025, Rachel founded the Columbus Design Collective, a networking and professional development group for multidisciplinary designers in Columbus, IN.

Previously, Rachel held UX and web strategy positions with Indiana University’s University Communications and Marketing, ATPCO, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. She has presented at Indiana University’s Statewide IT Conference, where she delivered “Treating Stakeholders as an Additional User Group” and “One Human, Many Hats: UX Research for Nimble Teams." She also presented "Treating Stakeholders as an Additional User Group" at the April 2026 IxDA Indianapolis design meetup.

Rachel holds a Master of Library and Information Science from Indiana University Indianapolis and a Bachelor of Music from Baldwin Wallace University. More information about her can be found on her LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelwilken).