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.

Create a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts
Gold
Thursday, November 17, 2022 • Civic Design 2022
Share the love for this talk
Create a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts
Speakers: Shawna Hein and Kevin Hoffman
Link:

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."

Ask the Rosenbot
Peter Van Dijck
Building the Rosenbot
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Dominique Ward
The Most Exciting Time for DesignOps is Now
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Rachael Dietkus, LCSW
AI: Passionate defenses and reasoned critique [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2024 • Advancing Research Community
Alastair Simpson
Debunking the Myths of Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Steve Portigal
War Stories LIVE! Q&A-Discussion
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
How AI will Change DesignOps Tooling
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Caroline Jarrett
Garbage in, garbage out? Measuring error rates to get ready for AI
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Ivana Ng
Level Up Your Program with ProductOps
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Erika Flowers
AI-Readiness: Preparing NASA for a Data-Driven, Agile Future
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Natalia Radywyl
Co-Designing New Power in Australia's Public Sector
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Marisa Bernstein
It Takes GRIT: Lessons from the Small, but Mighty World of Civic Usability Testing
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
David Cronin
The GE Design System and Thoughts about Craft at Scale
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Erin Hoffman-John
This Game is Never Done: Design Leadership Techniques from the Video Game World
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Cassandra Piester
Developing and Deploying Your Design Operations Strategy
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Bruce Gillespie
Learning from journalism: Balancing impactful communication with compassionate storytelling
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Yolanda Rankin
Black Feminist Epistemology as a Critical Framework for Equitable Design
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold

More Videos

Gregg Bernstein

"Once people see the value of research, they want more of it; it becomes a habit."

Gregg Bernstein

Opportunistic Research with Gregg Bernstein

July 11, 2019

Dr. Nikki Smith

"Just tell me what you’re telling me—executives want clear and simple narratives, not complexity and jargon."

Dr. Nikki Smith

Research Strategy: Connecting Insights to Outcomes

March 12, 2025

Victor Udoewa

"When difference comes together, something new emerges neither could have traveled alone."

Victor Udoewa

Theme One Intro

March 27, 2023

Savannah Carlin

"People often forget what they wrote and then want to check their prompt again before refining it."

Savannah Carlin

Don't botch the bot: Designing interactions for AI

June 4, 2024

Jorge Arango

"Confusing product portfolios often arise when two successful teams’ products overlap, complement, or have vague distinctions."

Jorge Arango

Meeting of the Waters: Designing for Successful Inorganic Growth

August 12, 2021

Ian Johnson

"Dimensionality reduction algorithms take data points in high dimensional space and put them close together in 2D if they're similar."

Ian Johnson

Latent Scope: Finding structure in unstructured data

June 11, 2025

Ebru Namaldi

"We created AI OKRs allowing our team members to experiment and then share their findings with the team."

Ebru Namaldi

Designing the Designer’s Journey: Scaling Teams, Culture, and Growth Through DesignOps

September 11, 2025

Jemma Ahmed

"Ultimately, we’re all here to help our companies care about the customer faster, no matter the tribe or method."

Jemma Ahmed

Bringing together market and user research

October 17, 2019

Teresa Swingler

"Urban air mobility business is expected to be profitable by 2028, helping solve dense city congestion."

Teresa Swingler

Look, Up in the Sky! UX/UI for Aerospace

October 27, 2022