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
Caroline Jarrett
Have fun with statistics?
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Bas Raijmakers, PhD (RCA)
What Design Research can Learn from Documentary Filmmaking
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Brenna Fallon
Learning Over Outcomes
2019 • DesignOps Summit 2019
Gold
Sam Proulx
To Boldly Go: The New Frontiers of Accessibility
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Jon Fukuda
Theme One Intro
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Nicole Aleong
Future Orientations to Everyday Life: Futures Anthropology as a Methodology
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Alfred Kahn
A Seat at the Table: Making Your Team a Strategic Partner
2023 • Design in Product 2023
Gold
Natalia Radywyl
Co-Designing New Power in Australia's Public Sector
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Rachel Posman
"Ask Me Anything" with Rachel Posman and John Calhoun, Authors of the Upcoming Rosenfeld Book, The Design Conductors
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Harry Max
Prioritization for Leaders (2nd of 3 seminars)
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Michal Anne Rogondino
Saving Outer Space: The First UX Design System for Our Nation’s Satellites
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Uday Gajendar
Leading through the long tail of trauma
2022 • Advancing Research Community
Kathleen Asjes
Research Democratization: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Peter Merholz
The 2025 State of UX/Design Organizational Health
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Kit Unger
Theme 1 Intro
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Chris Geison
What is Research Strategy?: A Panel of Research Leaders Discuss this Emergent Question
2021 • Advancing Research Community

More Videos

Alexis Lucio

"No design system will ever be fully accessible because new features and permutations are always being introduced."

Alexis Lucio

Scaling Accessibility Through Design Systems

June 9, 2022

Steve Portigal

"I was very conscious of what I perceived might be impatience from stakeholders watching the interview."

Steve Portigal Susan Simon-Daniels Tamara Hale Randolph Duke II

War Stories LIVE! Q&A-Discussion

March 30, 2020

Jemma Ahmed

"Combining primary and secondary knowledge builds powerful insight for stronger inclusivity of women."

Jemma Ahmed

Theme Three Intro

March 29, 2023

Ariel Kennan

"This field is still really emergent and growing momentum nationally and internationally."

Ariel Kennan

Theme Two Intro

November 17, 2022

Etienne Fang

"Leadership is about making other people better as a result of your presence in a way that lasts into our absence."

Etienne Fang

The Power of Care: From Human-Centered Research to Humanity-Centered Leadership

March 10, 2021

"You have to be merciless in your prioritization when everything feels urgent."

World Usability Day Panel Discussion

November 10, 2022

Ryan Matthew

"Annotate in Figma dev mode lets you provide accessibility details that AI models will implement automatically."

Ryan Matthew Alex Kurchev

Bridging Design and Code: AI-Powered Design System Integration

September 11, 2025

Maria Giudice

"You have to ask yourself, are you ready for the messiness, the hard choices, and the chaos that come with change?"

Maria Giudice

Remaking the Making Company: Moving from Product to Experience

June 9, 2016

Eduardo Ortiz

"I made the mistake of arguing in the chat instead of slowing down and asking the group what would make qualitative data persuasive for them."

Eduardo Ortiz Robin Beers Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Bruce Gillespie Jess Greco Marieke McCloskey Renee Reid

Day 3 Theme Panel

March 13, 2025