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
Mike Oren
Improving Democratized Research with CustomGPTs and Gems
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Saskia Liebenberg
Start Small for Big Impact
2019 • DesignOps Community
Uday Gajendar
Theme 1: Introduction
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Sam Ladner
How Research Can Drive Strategic Foresight
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Andrea Gallagher
The Problem Space
2019 • Advancing Research Community
Kate Koch
Flex Your Super Powers: When a Design Ops Team Scales to Power CX
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Mujtaba Hameed
Frameworks for Excellence: Using Visual Thinking and Communication to Elevate Your Research
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Ned Dwyer
Right horses for the right courses – how and when to democratize research
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Jules Monza
Use These Words and Count These Things
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
GenAI for UXers: A Rosenbot Demo and Discussion
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Natalie Dunbar
DesignOps and Content Strategy: Envisioning the Future Together
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Prayag Narula
Dialing for Research: How to Reach the Unreachable
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Giff Constable
Financial fluency for product leaders: AMA with Giff Constable
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Bria Alexander
Day 3 Welcome
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Kate Towsey
The State of ResearchOps: More Than Just Theory
2019 • DesignOps Community
Holly Cole
Panel Discussion: Growing People and Teams
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold

More Videos

Jen Cardello

"It doesn’t matter how much data you have if you don’t ask the right question."

Jen Cardello Dr. Shadi Janansefat Alex Wright

Curating insight: Strategies for integrating knowledge across research functions

March 11, 2025

Mark Interrante

"Current AI tools help summarize and sift large volumes of feedback into meaningful patterns."

Mark Interrante Harry Max

AI for Prioritization (3rd of 3 seminars)

July 11, 2024

Dan Willis

"If you ever feel like you can't do this job or you're in over your head, it's totally normal."

Dan Willis

Enterprise Storytelling Sessions

June 14, 2018

John Cutler

"The estuary is highly resilient but also very sensitive to industrial waste—creative collaboration areas in organizations are similar."

John Cutler

Oxbows, Rivers, and Estuaries: How to navigate the currents of change (without burning out)

December 3, 2024

Tutti Taygerly

"Slow down to speed up means focusing on long-term shared goals rather than immediate conflicts."

Tutti Taygerly

Videconference: How to Work with Difficult People with Tutti Taygerly

June 25, 2020

Giff Constable

"You don’t have to be a CFO or accountant, most of the time you won’t even touch balance sheets or cash flow statements."

Giff Constable

Financial fluency for product leaders: AMA with Giff Constable

April 11, 2024

Sam Proulx

"Desktop requires understanding multiple browsers and assistive tech variants, increasing complexity."

Sam Proulx

Mobile Accessibility: Why Moving Accessibility Beyond the Desktop is Critical in a Mobile-first World

September 8, 2022

Dr. Jamika D. Burge

"The storytelling is what ultimately supports actual change more than just data."

Dr. Jamika D. Burge Jemma Ahmed Chris Geison

Bridge Building across Research Disciplines

August 26, 2021

Tara Tressel

"If I really just needed only quantitative data from a survey, then I would not go the AI moderated route."

Tara Tressel

Investigating qualitative depth of AI-moderated interviews

March 10, 2026