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
"The layer cake framework helps notice where and what kind of power actually resides in systems."
Shanti Mathew Natalie Sims Natalia RadywylCivic Design at Scale: Introducing the Public Policy Layer Cake
December 9, 2021
"Leadership growth among UX research is still fairly organic, so we need to learn how to establish ourselves to take leadership roles."
Mac SmithMeasuring Up: Using Product Research for Organizational Impact
March 12, 2021
"Syncing calendars lets you see free time blocks across your team without exposing exact personal details."
Roberta Dombrowski Lianna Aduana5 Reasons to Bring your Recruiting in House
September 30, 2021
"Make your audience the hero in your story to ensure they identify deeply and emotionally."
Jon FukudaStorytelling for DesignOps
August 17, 2023
"Product managers are trying to keep up with deadlines but often launch hard-to-use features hoping to make them better later."
Aditi Ruiz Christian Crumlish Farid SabitovPulse Check: Empathy Mapping Your Product Manager, Pt. 2
December 6, 2022
"The primary way to convene with other attendees is through our Slack channel."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
January 8, 2024
"The real problem is asking me to learn specialized hotkeys for an application I only use once a year."
Sam ProulxDesigning For Screen Readers: Understanding the Mental Models and Techniques of Real Users
September 30, 2021
"There’s been a steady evolution starting with delivering buildings to delivering national economic visions."
Stephen PollardClosing Keynote: Getting giants to dance - what can we learn from designing large and complex public infrastructure?
November 7, 2017
"I’m worried you aren’t up to it, frankly."
Dan WillisEnterprise Storytelling Sessions
June 8, 2017
