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
"Our product simply sucks everything out of the open AI system and processes it with a knowledge graph based on ISO standards."
Joerg Beringer Thomas GeisScaling User Research with AI: Continuous Discovery of User Needs in Minutes
September 10, 2025
"Every team that’s come into the program has self-selected in. They want in and are trying to do the right thing."
Marc Rettig Julie Baher Phil Gilbert Nathan ShedroffDiscussion
May 14, 2015
"Acceleration without losing quality is a company-wide goal, not just a design, product, or tech goal."
Claire DhooscheCoordinating chaos: Preventing workflow fragmentation when everyone accelerates with AI
June 9, 2026
"Culture isn’t just behavior over time, it’s the artifacts that culture creates and embraces over time."
Phil GilbertA Consistent Culture of Design
May 14, 2015
"Emojis and GIFs have become effective tools for remote teams to add expression and prevent miscommunication."
Jilanna WilsonDistributed Design Operations Management
October 23, 2019
"Leadership often pressures teams to integrate AI without explaining why or how, which leads to confusion and frustration."
Rachel GarbExit Interview #7: Facing a blank slate in retirement when constraints are all you’ve ever known
August 5, 2026
"We structured the research around helping them fill out their housing application at the same time, so we were mindful of their time and they would also get something out of it."
Sarah FathallahLessening the Research Burden on Vulnerable Communities
March 30, 2020
"Distinguishing design ops from design leadership and management is a big, messy space we want to bring clarity to."
John Calhoun Rachel PosmanBring your DesignOps Story to Life! The Definitive DesignOps Book Jam
October 3, 2023
"Consent is ongoing; check in repeatedly during interviews about participants’ comfort and willingness."
Uday Gajendar Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Dr. Dawn Emerick Dawn E. Shedrick, LCSWLeading through the long tail of trauma
July 7, 2022