Create a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts
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
"Keeping something cloud-based accessible is the most complicated because of hundreds of releases per day in continuous integration."
Sheri Byrne-HaberAccessibility at Scale
June 9, 2021
"That pen on paper helps your brain think through ideas faster."
Joe ElmendorfShitty Maps: A Trojan Horse for Sensemaking
July 9, 2026
"Only when we translate our success into the company’s language can we really quantify our contribution to overall strategy."
Gonzalo GoyanesDesign ROI: Cover a Little, Get a Lot
September 8, 2022
"Not every Design Ops person is the same, and Design Ops is going to look very different at every company."
Dave Malouf Meredith Black Farid SabitovThe Past, Present, and Future of DesignOps: a 2-part DesignOps Community Call (Part 1)
February 17, 2022
"UX assets are actually valuable resources that generate revenue and contribute to business success."
Emily DiLeo Maria TaylorStronger Together: Lessons Learned from UX Research Ops
September 24, 2024
"Even teams with dedicated designers sometimes have gaps because designers get pulled to other priorities."
Audrey CraneShadow Design–Where Else is Design Happening in Your Organization?
April 20, 2023
"Researchers are moving away from viewing AI as automation and toward a sophisticated collaborator or soundboard."
Taylor KlassmanThe Evolution of UX Research Platforms
March 10, 2026
"Sustainability can accelerate adoption when it aligns with business impact, like improving conversions."
Ned Gartside Mike Gifford Zoe Lopez-Latorre Tzviya SiegmanNavigating accessibility and climate
April 17, 2024
"Developing team flow is a lot like dating—you have to nurture it, build instinct, and practice."
Ruzanna RozmanGetting in Flow with Your Team
January 8, 2024
