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
"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."
Shawna Hein Kevin HoffmanCreate a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts
November 17, 2022
"Watching users navigate with assistive technology exposes you to barriers that people with disabilities face online."
Kavana RameshMeaningful inclusion: Practicing accessibility research with confidence
September 24, 2024
"Bring your clients and stakeholders into the process early to make sure the visual language works for them."
Mujtaba HameedFrameworks for Excellence: Using Visual Thinking and Communication to Elevate Your Research
March 26, 2024
"Everyone may have different energy levels depending on the time of day, medication can also affect this."
Jessica NorrisADHD: A DesignOps Superpower
September 9, 2022
"Strategy is telling organizations what not to do, not just generating new ideas."
Mike Oren Janice WiitalaDesign Research Strategy & Strategic Design Research
February 3, 2022
"You will have zero successes if you’re not trying it all."
Jacqui Frey Alison RandSetting the Table for Dynamic Change
October 24, 2019
"We created research indexes with search blocks that update over time to help people focus on the most recent insights."
Michelle Bejian Lotia Anne-Marie MorellRolling Out a Repository: How Zapier Centralizes Insights from Across their Organization
March 28, 2023
"The US has the highest maternal mortality rate among high-income nations in the world."
Meghan BausoneSystems Thinking and Design Innovation: Working with Leverage Points in Rural Maternal Health Systems
April 17, 2026
"It was like publishing the family secret recipe, but sharing usability patterns was crucial for advocacy."
Rob Mitzel Sébastien MaloThe Tale of Two Companies: Building a Successful UX Practice in a Century-Old Enterprise
January 8, 2024
