Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Create a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts

Gold
Thursday, November 17, 2022 • Civic Design 2022
Share the love for this talk
Create a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts
Speakers: Shawna Hein and Kevin Hoffman
Link:

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."

Ask the Rosenbot
Jorge Arango
Exploding the Notebook: How to Unlock the Power of Linked Notes (2nd of 3 seminars)
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Greg Nudelman
Designing Conversational Interfaces
2019 • Enterprise Community
Megan Blocker
What UX research maturity looks like and how we get there [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2023 • Advancing Research Community
Maria Giudice
Remaking the Making Company: Moving from Product to Experience
2016 • Enterprise UX 2016
Gold
Mackenzie Guinon
M.C. Escher’s UX Research Career Ladder
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Christian Crumlish
Introduction by our Conference Chair
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Joshua Noble
Casual Inference
2023 • QuantQual Interest Group
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Sandra Camacho
Creating More Bias-Proof Designs
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Max Gadney
Assessing UX jobs for impact in climate
2024 • Climate UX Interest Group
Louis Rosenfeld
Opening Remarks
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Alana Washington
Theme 1: Introduction and Provocation
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Deanna Zandt
The Unspoken Complexity of “Self-Care” with Deanna Zandt
2022 • Civic Design Community
Nalini Kotamraju
Research After UX
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Xenia Adjoubei
Empowering Communities Through the Researcher in Residence Program
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Taylor Klassman
The Evolution of UX Research Platforms
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Gold

More Videos

Daniela Magaña Flores

"The faster the reaction, the less distorted it is by cognitive processes, capturing genuine gut feelings."

Daniela Magaña Flores Ariane Rahn Jeff Ephraim Bander

Ahead of Competition: Learn What UX Benchmarking Can Do for Your Business Today

March 10, 2022

Jane Davis

"You want a computer to do computer work—finding patterns in large datasets."

Jane Davis

Strategic Shifts and Innovations in User Research: Navigating Challenges and Opportunities

March 11, 2025

Jorge Arango

"If organizations don’t keep content organized, it becomes less usable and less useful over time."

Jorge Arango

Scale Smart: AI-Powered Content Organization Strategies

September 24, 2024

Feleesha Sterling

"Rapid research is going quickly; you get a lot of information fast, but the analysis isn’t as deep as other methods."

Feleesha Sterling

Building a Rapid Research Program

May 18, 2023

Richard Buchanan

"In fourth order design, the designer steps back and becomes a facilitator of discussions among others."

Richard Buchanan

Creativity and Principles in the Flourishing Enterprise

June 15, 2018

Raven Veal

"Storytelling is highly effective in helping stakeholders understand the complete performance of products, including the darker sides."

Raven Veal

Dark Metrics: Illuminating the Negative Impact of Digital Health Design

March 12, 2021

Heidi Trost

"People become incrementally more comfortable giving away data because they see the value AI provides."

Heidi Trost

When AI Becomes the User’s Point Person—and Point of Failure

August 7, 2025

Carl Turner

"The difference between the way people talk about how things are done and how they are actually done reveals unconscious assumptions."

Carl Turner

You Can Do This: Understand and Solve Organizational Problems to Jumpstart a Dead Project

March 28, 2023

Kevin Bethune

"We’re serving a hyper-connected, multifaceted, intersectional world, and even the planet is a stakeholder."

Kevin Bethune

Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation

June 8, 2022