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
"I often think of myself as a stakeholder strategist because sometimes the design title doesn’t quite capture it."
Chris Govias Mai-Ling Garcia Emily LessardPerspectives on Civic Design
September 23, 2021
"Transparency is building respect for what your teammates do."
Jennifer KanyamibwaCreating the Blueprint: Growing and Building Design Teams
November 8, 2018
"When you go to a physician, you trust their diagnosis and treatment, not just the tests they order."
Aras Bilgen Ari ZelmanowResearch Democratization: A Debate
March 29, 2023
"Creating evergreen documents enables asynchronous influence — it’s not about being in the room all the time, it’s about having your voice heard."
Catt Small Micah Bennett Brian Carr Jessica HarlleeWhat's Next for ICs: Exploring Staff and Principal Designer Roles
February 22, 2024
"Applying systems thinking means changing one part affects the whole system — there’s no linearity in relationships."
Patrizia BertiniDesignOps + KPIs = Measure your Impact!
January 8, 2024
"Align on what you’re looking for before the interview to evaluate non-traditional candidates fairly."
Discussion
June 9, 2017
"Rolling out a research repository is complex but crucial to avoid duplicate research and make insights discoverable."
Michelle Bejian Lotia Anne-Marie MorellRolling Out a Repository: How Zapier Centralizes Insights from Across their Organization
March 28, 2023
"Accept that the first iteration won’t be 100% accessible; moving the needle bit by bit still creates huge impact."
Suzan Bednarz Hilary SunderlandAccessibilityOps for All
January 8, 2024
"Futures anthropology teaches us to separate users' expectations, anticipations, hopes, and speculations about the future."
Nicole Aleong Michaela Mora Prayag Narula Brianna SylverWhat UX research can learn from other research practices [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
September 14, 2023
