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
"Researchers are in the sense making business—they connect the present to the future, step by step, helping users get what they need."
Dana ChisnellThe Sensemaking Business
March 10, 2026
"In a nuclear war, the only things that would survive on Earth would be cockroaches and these old SAP screens."
Sam YenDriving Organizational Change Through Design? Do more of this and less of that
June 9, 2017
"Legacy applications linger because changing them is risk-ridden and a major undertaking."
Malini RaoLessons Learned from a 4-year Product Re-platforming Journey
June 9, 2021
"No amount of bringing even President Obama to sign paperwork would have changed what really needed to happen."
Mariah Hay Marina Martin Husani Oakley Eduardo OrtizBUILD: Discussion
June 14, 2018
"Senior leaders think about research in two buckets: discovery, telling me what the problem is, and evaluation, telling me how to solve it."
Dr. Nikki SmithResearch Strategy: Connecting Insights to Outcomes
March 12, 2025
"Video parties allow many teams to engage and observe learnings in a more compelling and digestible way than slides."
Joanna Vodopivec Prabhas PokharelOne Research Team for All - Influence Without Authority
March 9, 2022
"I made an explicit choice: we’re not making any offers until we’re interviewing women."
Dantley DavisLeadership & Diversity—A Fireside Chat with Dantley Davis
September 17, 2020
"It’s important to put the participant at ease and not add to their cognitive burden."
Sam Ladner Megan Blocker Tanvi Dhond Katie Hansen Ricardo MartinsMethodologies: Beyond the interview [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
September 4, 2024
"If you want psychological safety, you have to start with self-awareness and deep listening."
Stephen AndersonPuzzled? How to Coordinate Humans for Complex Challenges
May 27, 2021
