Create a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts
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
"It was like arriving to your home after a long day and just right to rest but at the same time you know you could not wait to continue working."
Benjamin RealMaturity Models: A Core Tool for Creating a DesignOps Strategy
October 1, 2021
"I don’t remember a time when there wasn’t a computer in the house talking at me."
Sam ProulxTo Boldly Go: The New Frontiers of Accessibility
June 10, 2022
"Can we just hang out, get on the tube, and hang out at Heathrow? He looked at me very strangely."
Stephen PollardClosing Keynote: Getting giants to dance - what can we learn from designing large and complex public infrastructure?
November 7, 2017
"You can spend a lot of time building a really cool concept that no one will care about because it’s not possible, it’s not feasible, it’s not grounded."
Catt SmallCraft a Vision that Actually Gets Shipped
April 30, 2026
"We want to send fewer mailers but make them more impactful, using A/B testing to optimize open and click rates."
Kristin WisnewskiMeasuring What Matters
October 23, 2019
"Systems that can self-organize are the strongest form of resilience."
Meghan BausoneSystems Thinking and Design Innovation: Working with Leverage Points in Rural Maternal Health Systems
April 17, 2026
"Every innovation carries responsibility; we must tread carefully with AI in health."
Vincent BrathwaiteOpener: Past, Present, and Future—Closing the Racial Divide in Design Teams
October 22, 2020
"Designers have a set of superpowers that give us a unique ability to envision a better future."
Doug PowellDesignOps and the Next Frontier: Leading Through Unpredictable Change
September 11, 2025
"Our consultant says we should pivot from business to dog to business to business—what do we do?"
Ted NewardTheme 4: Enterprise Organizational Journey
June 4, 2019
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What new workflows or tools have been effective in bridging the gap between design, engineering, and product teams using AI?
What risks does AI-driven scope creep pose and how should teams manage feature prioritization?
How does the Braver Collective exemplify ZX principles in supporting survivors of trauma?