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
"When Trisha said we are fearless, I disagree. I'm totally fearful."
John TaschekMaking People the X-Factor in the Enterprise
June 15, 2018
"Having visible work through Jira or spreadsheets helps designers set boundaries and ask for support objectively."
Courtney Maya GeorgeScale Your Organization and Grow Your Designers
September 8, 2022
"It's not a match-winning pass if no one catches it."
Megan Blocker Mujtaba Hameed Victor UdoewaPanel: Excellence in Impact
March 25, 2024
"Design is a service profession, a humble profession, less significant than the lives of the people we serve."
Richard BuchananCreativity and Principles in the Flourishing Enterprise
June 15, 2018
"If someone asks you for a cup of coffee, here’s the cup of coffee. You did it. But always have proposals on the side for more."
Jessamyn EdwardsSurviving Your UX Career in Enterprise Design
December 2, 2021
"Organizations are much better at making something better than they are at doing something new."
Peter LevinSolve a Problem Here, Transform a Strategy There: Research as an Occasion for Expanding Organizational Possibility
March 25, 2024
"Designers need better training to work with off-the-shelf enterprise software like Sitecore, Salesforce, and SharePoint."
Alexandra SchmidtEnterprise UX Playbook
December 1, 2022
"Tools like Mural are great for remote real-time sticky note brainstorming and affinity mapping."
Andrea GallagherThe Problem Space
May 16, 2019
"If we don’t design AI thoughtfully now, it will be too late when it suddenly hits us."
Dan HillDesigning for the infrastructures of everyday life
June 4, 2024
