Create a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts
Summary
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
"There’s often a mismatch between the users designers think about and the customers the business considers."
Ellen ChisaThe Values of Design
November 29, 2023
"We set the system usability scale score as a KPI for all products to improve measurement and usability."
Vasileios XanthopoulosA Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approach to User-Centric Maturity at Scale
January 8, 2024
"Research knowledge by itself is not enough. You need to add other sources like user voice, surveys, and customer feedback."
Maria Rosala Shivanjali M.Research Repositories
March 12, 2026
"You can’t jump from UX maturity rung one to six; it’s a deliberate climb focusing on your current challenge."
JJ KercherA Roadmap for Maturing Design in the Enterprise
June 15, 2018
"The purpose of a system is what it does—so you can measure an enterprise by its outcomes, not just by its slogans or strategy documents."
Milan GuentherA Shared Language for Co-Creating Ambitious Endeavours
June 6, 2023
"To do this work, you can’t do it with a JIRA ticket."
Uday GajendarThe Rise of Meta-Design: A Starter Playbook
May 19, 2022
"How do we become facilitators who can encourage and model true power sharing? That’s the big question."
Natalia RadywylCo-Designing New Power in Australia's Public Sector
November 16, 2022
"We did a blended approach with a visual refresh first to minimize differences between old and new and buy time."
Malini RaoLessons Learned from a 4-year Product Re-platforming Journey
June 9, 2021
"Persistence is about beating the drum over and over, even if it feels annoying."
Robin Beers Nalini Kotamraju Andy WarrPanel: Excellence in Communicating Insights
March 26, 2024
