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
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Cohesion in Civic design requires structured coordination among various teams.
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User-centered design is crucial for improving the digital experience of veterans.
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Creating reliable user access is essential for conducting effective research.
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Collaboration tools like Slack can facilitate cross-team communication.
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Standardized design practices lead to consistency in user experience across agencies.
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Centralized leadership helps align multiple contracting teams toward common goals.
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Visible and accessible past research helps prevent redundancy in design efforts.
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Budgeting in Civic design should evolve to accommodate agile practices.
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Clear processes are necessary for decision making in diverse design environments.
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Involving designers in early decision-making enhances their ability to focus on their specialties.
Notable Quotes
"We take a more cohesive approach where we have government employees dedicated to hosting and planning."
"For a good human-centered design to happen, you have to have access to the right humans."
"Throwing a bunch of smart people at a problem alone doesn’t typically result in a positive outcome."
"Designers are notoriously tied to their tools for many reasons."
"Giving folk useful constraints is important when there’s a landscape as large as ours."
"Clear processes for escalation and decision-making are necessary to encourage collaboration."
"We’ve seen a growth in the usage of self-service tools, meaning veterans are getting the benefits they deserve."
"Giving designers access to users for research is not enough to make things cohesive."
"We encourage regular reliable access to users for our own designers."
"We wanted to make patterns visible as soon as possible to other designers."
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