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
"Behavior change doesn’t happen after two days of training; it takes ongoing support, coaching, and modeling."
Julie Gitlin Esther RaiceDesign as an Agent of Digital Transformation at JPMC
June 9, 2021
"The biggest challenge was getting the design organization on the same page to prioritize effectively."
World Usability Day Panel Discussion
November 10, 2022
"Moving partners from passive to resistant helped reveal their fears and motivations so we could tailor our conversations to them."
Anat Fintzi Rachel MinnicksDelivering at Scale: Making Traction with Resistant Partners
June 9, 2022
"A lot of design frameworks funnel thinking narrowly, which feels like baked-in limitations of human-centered design."
Sheryl CababaIntegrating Systems Thinking Into Your Practice as a Designer
October 1, 2025
"You should think about what you uniquely will do because of your values that others might not tolerate."
Ellen ChisaThe Values of Design
November 29, 2023
"I work in an organization where its leaders don’t understand design and don’t value it. It just doesn’t get resourced."
Brianna SylverLead With Purpose
March 31, 2020
"In decentralized teams, the risk is redundant insights and lack of cumulative knowledge."
Jen Cardello Dr. Shadi Janansefat Alex WrightCurating insight: Strategies for integrating knowledge across research functions
March 11, 2025
"Many predictable harms in social media, gig economy, and Web3 were foreseen but not prevented because design lacked the needed power."
Anil DashDesigning with power in the age of AI
June 10, 2026
"No two transit riders are alike. No two transit trips are alike. No two service disruptions are alike."
Kristin TaylorBuilding Bridges Across Organizational Silos
November 18, 2022
