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
"We want you to have a great time and feel good about being here — if anything is preventing that, let us know."
Bria Alexander Louis RosenfeldOpening Remarks Day 1
March 25, 2024
"Conflict occurs when something important to us feels threatened or disrespected."
Laura WeissTurn Down the Heat: 3 Ways to Handle Conflict in the Moment
November 20, 2024
"Non-researchers found traction when conversations were hyper relevant to what they were working on."
Trisha TerharEmpathizing with the Empowered: Non-Researcher Responses to Democratization
March 10, 2022
"Space is about the level of zoom—whether we’re looking at a UI, a product, or the whole business delivery."
Séamus ByrneAligning Teams with Choreography
January 8, 2024
"Tracking the results of design ops initiatives allows you to tell data-informed stories, putting you on the same level as other leaders who speak data."
Jules MonzaUse These Words and Count These Things
September 25, 2024
"The size of your role doesn't determine your impact; it's how your role fits into the bigger picture."
Shahrzad SamadzadehWhat Is My Value? Two Takes and Some Mistakes
January 8, 2024
"The six blind men and the elephant story teaches us never to work in silos but to see the whole journey."
Maish NichaniSparking a Service Excellence Mindset at a Government Agency
December 9, 2021
"Unmoderated research is exciting because it lets us gather insights while freeing people up to be in two places at once."
Liza Pemstein Jane DavisScaling Research Via an Ops First Model at Clever
March 27, 2023
"Secondary research becomes a primary choice in user research in the age of AI."
Joerg Beringer Thomas GeisScaling User Research with AI: Continuous Discovery of User Needs in Minutes
September 10, 2025
