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
"We are still a community even though we are virtual and are obliged to treat each other with kindness and respect."
Louis Rosenfeld Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
November 16, 2022
"AI is just a tool. If AI is just a tool, what is behind it? Technology working with complex data models."
Dem Gerolemou Alexis Oh Neef RehmanClimate technology fundamentals
May 15, 2024
"Asynchronous conversations have nested threads humans track easily but are hard for bots to replicate."
Jonathan Fairman Kevin JohnsonIntegrating generative AI into enterprise products: A case study from dscout
June 5, 2024
"If we don't do hard thinking and critical collaboration when building agents, we’ll end up with armies of unused agents."
Tina WeisserWhen AI Agents Meet Reality. Service Design Lessons from a Pilot
February 26, 2026
"It’s not consolidation for consolidation’s sake, it needs to be intentional and mindful of trade-offs."
Ned Dwyer Jadyn AguilarThe Future of DesignOps is Tool Consolidation
September 23, 2024
"The alternate to engaging with conflict is suffering quietly or accumulating conflict debt."
Laura WeissTurn Down the Heat: 3 Ways to Handle Conflict in the Moment
November 20, 2024
"Most services were being used by people not directly impacted by the storm but by construction workers and volunteers."
Emily Danielson“I mean, I can lift a shovel”: Design Skills in Disaster Response
June 9, 2022
"Translation is key to earn the seat at the table."
Shan ShenTranslating UX Terms into Business Contexts
November 29, 2023
"Share early, share ugly—that’s our mantra for this entire process."
Cassandra PiesterDeveloping and Deploying Your Design Operations Strategy
September 24, 2024