Create a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts
Summary
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 day is a chance to check: is this how I want to be? This is a long-haul, marathon effort."
Denise Jacobs Nancy Douyon Renee Reid Lisa WelchmanInteractive Keynote: Social Change by Design
January 8, 2024
"The unsung hero of Enterprise UX isn’t the user or the researcher or the designer — it’s the person drowning in emails, Excel sheets, and project plans."
Dan WillisEnterprise Storytelling Sessions
June 8, 2016
"Miles gave them the music as they entered the studio; they didn’t know what they were going to be playing."
Jim KalbachJazz Improvisation as a Model for Team Collaboration
June 4, 2019
"Collaboration with peers and speaker coaches creates better content and stronger relationships beyond the conference."
Louis Rosenfeld Jemma Ahmed Christian Crumlish Uday Gajendar Chris GeisonCoffee with Lou #3: What Makes for a Successful UX Conference Presentation?
May 2, 2024
"Perception maps visually represent how consumers perceive brands relative to competitors along key attributes."
Ricardo MartinsUnlocking the power of advanced quantitative methods
March 12, 2025
"I’d argue you couldn’t be effective in any role without some sense of how to create partnerships and move forward."
Frank DuranPartnership Playbook: Lessons Learned in Effective Partnership
January 8, 2024
"Many tech harms run counter to business goals and can be controversial to address."
Alexandra SchmidtWhy Ethics Can't Save Tech
November 18, 2022
"A service blueprint would have helped show the complex backend systems supporting what looks like a simple user interface."
Davis Neable Guy SegalHow to Drive a Design Project When you Don’t Have a Design Team
June 10, 2021
"The experience of using a screen reader is probably 10 times faster as you become more expert with it."
Sam ProulxDesigning For Screen Readers: Understanding the Mental Models and Techniques of Real Users
December 10, 2021
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
How important is fluency across business, customer, technology, design, and data domains for product managers?
How do constant reorganizations in tech companies impact employee motivation and career decisions?
How can I describe my professional value without relying on traditional design job titles?