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
Dharani Perera
The mandala of service design: unlocking alignment and action through service design
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Laureen Kattan
Centering Patients and Clinicians in a Complex Government Ecosystem
2023 • Design in Product 2023
Gold
Trisha Causley
[Demo] Complexity in disguise: Crafting experiences for generative AI features
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Laura Weiss
There is No Playbook: Leader as Coach During Challenging Times
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Louis Rosenfeld
Coffee with Lou: Should You Write a (UX) Book?
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Sarah Fathallah
Lessening the Research Burden on Vulnerable Communities
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Brendan Jarvis
Framing Tomorrow by Questioning Today
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Josh Clark
Sentient Design: New Postures for AI-Mediated Experiences (2nd of 3 seminars)
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Benjamin Real
Maturity Models: A Core Tool for Creating a DesignOps Strategy
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Nancy Douyon
We'll Figure That Out in the Next Launch: Enterprise Tech's Nobility Complex
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Rima Campbell
Increase Productivity and Drive Business Impact
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Elizabeth Sklar
Co-creating research enablement with your tech org: a case study
2026 • Advancing Research 2026
Conference
Dean Broadley
Not Black Enough to be White
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2020
Gold
Peter Van Dijck
Hands-on AI #2: Understanding evals: LLM as a Judge
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Tim Parmee
Changing Our Design Pressure Points
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Malini Rao
Lessons Learned from a 4-year Product Re-platforming Journey
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold

More Videos

Michele Wong

"Without a design system, designers recreate and reinterpret their own versions of the brand, causing inconsistent UI across applications."

Michele Wong

Helping Them Help Us

January 8, 2024

Nicole Aleong

"There are over 7 billion futures of right now."

Nicole Aleong

Future Orientations to Everyday Life: Futures Anthropology as a Methodology

March 26, 2024

Christian Bason

"Civic design is challenging because it’s about discovering what kind of changes are needed, not just managing change."

Christian Bason

Innovating With People: Unleashing the Potential of Civic Design

December 8, 2021

Bria Alexander

"Take a picture of the QR code to access the digital swag bag and special offers."

Bria Alexander Louis Rosenfeld

Opening Remarks Day 2

March 26, 2024

Josina Vink

"We have this tendency that once we’ve made this big mega map, we think we’ve captured the system in its entirety."

Josina Vink

Navigating the pitfalls of systems thinking in service design

December 4, 2024

Stephen Pollard

"Organizational culture and values have been essential to ensuring successful delivery."

Stephen Pollard

Closing Keynote: Getting giants to dance - what can we learn from designing large and complex public infrastructure?

November 7, 2017

Sam Proulx

"Mobile screens can be angled and positioned easily, which helps if you struggle with glare or neck positioning."

Sam Proulx

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

November 17, 2022

Melinda Belcher

"Enterprise work is never done — you ship something, then come back to fix and improve it."

Melinda Belcher

Insider preview of Enterprise Experience 2020

May 28, 2020

Aurobinda Pradhan

"Product managers often see design work as a black box and want transparency and accountability."

Aurobinda Pradhan Shashank Deshpande

Introduction to Collaborative DesignOps using Cubyts

September 9, 2022