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
"There’s no reasonable prediction that AGI will exist in our lifetimes."
Steve Krug Louis RosenfeldDon’t Make Me Think 3.0: What Endures and What Evolves in UX
March 11, 2026
"Knowledge just isn’t created in isolation anymore."
Megan BlockerTheme 2 Intro
March 12, 2025
"Stakeholder mapping helps you see who needs what and align your tactics accordingly."
Joshua GravesWe Need To Talk: Managing Ludicrous Requests at Work (Part 3 of 3)
May 12, 2025
"Designers need to reflect on who their default user is and how power influences what is prioritized."
Sandra CamachoCreating More Bias-Proof Designs
January 22, 2025
"Design managers are deeply concerned about when and how their teams achieve goals while staying healthy."
Aurobinda Pradhan Shashank DeshpandeIntroduction to Collaborative DesignOps using Cubyts
September 8, 2022
"Art and visuals help represent what people cannot see, but only with strategic intention and understanding."
Ben Reason Aline Horta Majid Iqbal Fabiano LeoniMaking the system visible: The fastest path to better decisions
November 20, 2025
"Design ops people need to be seasoned for the role. There’s experience you can’t learn in college or a bootcamp."
Angelos ArnisState of DesignOps: Learnings from the 2021 Global Report
October 1, 2021
"I felt on edge and physically depleted after our interactions."
Darian DavisLessons from a Toxic Work Relationship
January 8, 2024
"Friction isn’t just annoying; it’s a force that reshapes behavior and can slow or stop user flow."
David SternbergUncovering the hidden forces shaping user behavior
July 17, 2025
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What features does Rosenbot offer to help UX learners deepen their knowledge through follow-up prompts?
Can AI accurately detect participant behavior discrepancies between what is said and what is done?
What are the core UX research tools essential for managing participant recruitment and study logistics in large companies?