ashleylbarth@gmail.com

ashleylbarth@gmail.com

Digital Regulation

The EU wrote a law. Twelve product teams needed to follow it. Nobody agreed on what that meant

Traveler holding an iphone with the new United App open

Role

Senior Product Designer, Trust & Safety

TL;DR

Translated EU law into a shared design system. Aligned 12 teams, eliminated 10+ deceptive patterns, and kept 6% of Microsoft's global revenue off the table.

Digital Regulation

The EU wrote a law. Twelve product teams needed to follow it. Nobody agreed on what that meant

Traveler holding an iphone with the new United App open

Role

Senior Product Designer, Trust & Safety

TL;DR

Translated EU law into a shared design system. Aligned 12 teams, eliminated 10+ deceptive patterns, and kept 6% of Microsoft's global revenue off the table.

Business & Organizational impact

Outcome

The Digital Services Act didn't come with a design spec. It came with a deadline, a revenue number attached to non-compliance, and twelve product teams who all had different ideas about what "transparent" meant. My job was to turn that disagreement into a system everyone could build from — before the deadline hit.

The Digital Services Act didn't come with a design spec. It came with a deadline, a revenue number attached to non-compliance, and twelve product teams who all had different ideas about what "transparent" meant. My job was to turn that disagreement into a system everyone could build from — before the deadline hit.

Business

6% of Microsoft's global annual revenue saved

40% reduction in project escalations

10 business areas aligned

User

Eliminated 10+ deceptive patterns across platform

Increased transparency across user experiences

Users

6% of Microsoft's global annual revenue saved

40% reduction in project escalations

10 business areas aligned

Eliminated 10+ deceptive patterns across platform

Increased transparency across user experiences

Business

6% of Microsoft's global annual revenue saved

40% reduction in project escalations

10 business areas aligned

User

Eliminated 10+ deceptive patterns across platform

Increased transparency across user experiences

Users

6% of Microsoft's global annual revenue saved

40% reduction in project escalations

10 business areas aligned

Eliminated 10+ deceptive patterns across platform

Increased transparency across user experiences

Opportunity & Approach

Strategy

Opportunity

Europe's Digital Services Act arrived with vague requirements, a tight timeline, and 6% of Microsoft's global revenue on the line. Nobody had design guidance for this. That was the problem. It was also the opening.

Europe's Digital Services Act arrived with vague requirements, a tight timeline, and 6% of Microsoft's global revenue on the line. Nobody had design guidance for this. That was the problem. It was also the opening.

Version of the United Airlines app before updates
Version of the United Airlines app before updates

Approach

We could have patched each requirement one screen at a time. That would have shipped faster and broken within a month. Instead we built a system: shared principles so teams stopped reinventing the same decisions, guardrails that let designers move fast without triggering legal reviews, and transparency patterns that read like product design, not legal copy.

We could have patched each requirement one screen at a time. That would have shipped faster and broken within a month. Instead we built a system: shared principles so teams stopped reinventing the same decisions, guardrails that let designers move fast without triggering legal reviews, and transparency patterns that read like product design, not legal copy.

A system-level response required:

Shared principles instead of one-off interpretations

Shared principles instead of one-off interpretations

Clear guardrails for fast decisions without escalation

Clear guardrails for fast decisions without escalation

Transparency that balances legal compliance with clarity

Transparency that balances legal compliance with clarity

Cross-functional

Alignment & Validation

Early DSA work revealed a problem we'd seen before. Designers in silos, optimizing for speed, unintentionally fragmenting patterns. Copy varied. Transparency approaches varied. Core principles varied. The result: confused stakeholders and compromised frameworks.

Early DSA work revealed a problem we'd seen before. Designers in silos, optimizing for speed, unintentionally fragmenting patterns. Copy varied. Transparency approaches varied. Core principles varied. The result: confused stakeholders and compromised frameworks.

Alignment

Home screen image of the united app at different stages of a flight

X-Designer Collaboration Workshops

Facilitated workshops across products to surface DSA pain points: Inconsistent transparency standards, conflicting guest vs. member treatments, unclear escalation boundaries causing bottlenecks.

X-Designer Collaboration Workshops

Facilitated workshops across products to surface DSA pain points: Inconsistent transparency standards, conflicting guest vs. member treatments, unclear escalation boundaries causing bottlenecks.

Leadership Project Reviews

Consolidated 15+ fragmented designer reviews into unified executive presentations. The shared context enabled faster legal alignment and on-time delivery.

Leadership Project Reviews

Consolidated 15+ fragmented designer reviews into unified executive presentations. The shared context enabled faster legal alignment and on-time delivery.

Risks

Every risk had a designed response. That was the point.

Compliance treated as a UX ceiling, not a floor

Compliance treated as a UX ceiling, not a floor

Reframed DSA as unmet user needs for transparency and safety. Not regulatory checkboxes.

Reframed DSA as unmet user needs for transparency and safety. Not regulatory checkboxes.

Designers joining mid-project with no shared context

Created shared training with Legal team to onboard designers joining the project mid-stream.

Created shared training with Legal team to onboard designers joining the project mid-stream.

Building something DSA-specific that breaks at the next regulation

Designed reusable trust guidelines, not DSA-specific patterns. Partnered with Legal to make them durable.

Designed reusable trust guidelines, not DSA-specific patterns. Partnered with Legal to make them durable.

Output

My Deliverables

Years of regulatory ambiguity, one system to resolve it. Here's what I built.

Design timelines and management across 9 teams

Design timelines and management across 9 teams

Created and delivered two net-new reporting projects, and drove design handoff across product teams

Created and delivered two net-new reporting projects, and drove design handoff across product teams

Regulation design training for 200+ designers

Regulation design training for 200+ designers

A reference website on Trust Design Guidelines covering treatment standards, a project library, and a deceptive pattern guide

A reference website on Trust Design Guidelines covering treatment standards, a project library, and a deceptive pattern guide

Trade-offs

Where it got interesting

System vs. screen-by-screen fixes

Tension

Teams wanted quick patches per requirement; Business wanted to meet minimum standards.

Decision: System

Slower upfront, faster and safer at scale.

Global approach vs. EU-only compliance

Tension

Legal initially favored minimum EU compliance; Design disagreed

Decision: Mixed

Global patterns with geo adaptations, anticipating future regulations.

Designer autonomy vs. consistency

Tension

Teams pushed back on centralized design guidance, viewing it as a bottleneck.

Decision: Consistency

Brought designers together to co-create shared standards rather than impose top-down rules, then documented them as org-wide guidelines.

What I did

My Role

This project had no precedent inside the org. There was no playbook, no prior art, and a legal team who needed design to speak their language. Here's what I was accountable for.

  • DSA compliance lead: 6 design teams, design reviews, Legal partnership

  • Cross-team alignment: Guidelines, workshops, shared standards

  • Pattern creation: Initial flows (reporting, transparency) adopted org-wide

Compliance fails when you design it screen by screen. Trust and regulation scale only as systems.

All cases

(3)

All cases

(3)

All cases

(3)