Create a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts
Summary
At a large U.S. federal agency, we've partnered across agency personnel, vendors, and contracts to build a single design culture that delivers an exceptional customer experience while meeting evolving business needs. We’ve built collaboration and critique rituals, tooling approaches, and design governance processes to organize 75+ designers into a unified practice all working together on a single, digital experience. We'll share what worked, what didn't, and provide a set of principles and tactics you can use right away – in any government agency – to begin building your own cohesive design practice, even when your ecosystem is anything but cohesive.
Key Insights
-
•
Centralizing research participant recruitment and documentation streamlines user access for multiple contract teams, improving research quality and inclusivity.
-
•
Collaboration across contractor boundaries is critical and can be facilitated by shared communication tools like Slack and regular cross-team meetings.
-
•
Normalizing design tools and processes across contractors ensures consistency, speeds onboarding, and prevents duplicated effort in maintaining design systems.
-
•
A governance-driven collaboration cycle with strict adherence to accessibility and user experience standards is required to launch VA digital applications.
-
•
Making design work and patterns visible early prevents redundant efforts and clarifies which user problems are already addressed.
-
•
Dedicated centralized expert teams in accessibility, content, IA, and QA free designers to specialize and maintain quality in large-scale enterprise projects.
-
•
Legal constraints, such as the Paperwork Reduction Act, limit research interactions, requiring balancing ethical concerns with agile user research.
-
•
Contracts structured around individual products rather than whole user experiences create challenges in coordination and require extra collaborative effort.
-
•
Fostering psychological safety and informal feedback venues enables design teams from multiple companies to share work openly and improve outcomes.
-
•
The VA’s approach has led to millions of veterans using self-service tools monthly, highlighting the impact of cohesive government design practices.
Notable Quotes
"Throwing a potluck sounds easy until you realize you don’t have a group that magically reads each other’s minds, resulting in a random table of snack foods."
"Our digital experience group acts like hosts and planners making sure veterans sit down to a cohesive, inclusive meal, not just disparate dishes."
"We have over 30 contracting teams spread across roughly 10 vendors all working on parts of the veteran experience landscape."
"A government designer aims to reduce UX variation while a contractor may optimize only their single product, creating potential conflicts."
"Reliable access to veterans and other users is fundamental to running quality, inclusive research across many teams and products."
"Slack channels and weekly meetings encourage cross-contract collaboration, avoiding duplication and sharing learnings across teams."
"The collaboration cycle requires following standards for accessibility, content, design system usage, and IA or you don’t launch your product."
"We treat our shared tooling and design system as a product with a dedicated team maintaining reusable components and governance."
"Designers contribute experimental patterns back to the design system early, making their work visible even before full validation."
"We’ve seen self-service tool usage grow from hundreds to millions of veterans served monthly after launching a unified VA platform."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Every time we say, I would prefer not to, we reclaim a little bit of agency."
Jemma AhmedTheme 1 Intro
March 10, 2026
"You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can't connect with other people, nothing will come of it."
Laura Gatewood Laine ProkayBeyond Buzzwords: Adding Heart to Effective Slack Communication
September 23, 2024
"Energy might not be conserved locally in a smaller patch of space but everything works out when the space is sufficiently large."
Jennifer FraserWhat would Emmy Noether Do? Math, Models and Mulling in UX Research
March 29, 2023
"Connecting the skills inventory to the career framework was crucial to getting buy-in across functions."
Jess GrecoCreating a Basis for Change: Scaling Design Maturity
June 8, 2022
"We want you to put your pencil down and pay attention because you have access to sketch notes, recorded talks, decks, and written notes."
Louis Rosenfeld Christian CrumlishOpening Remarks
November 29, 2023
"Good problem statements begin with aspirational mindsets and use backcasting to envision preferred futures."
Surya VankaUnleashing Swarm Creativity to Solve Enterprise Challenges
June 10, 2021
"AI isn't good at context yet; it may insist it's a B or a 13, but not that it could be both depending on view."
David ConradThe Feeling of Data
September 14, 2023
"A good UX ticket is just like any other ticket — clear title, description, acceptance criteria, and scope."
Chris HodowanecAgile + User Experience: How to navigate the Agile landscape as an UX Practitioner
November 16, 2022
"I was a very difficult person there. I was able to be head of design because I could sell my vision, but it was incredibly lonely."
Tutti TaygerlyVideconference: How to Work with Difficult People with Tutti Taygerly
June 25, 2020
