Discussion
Summary
The session includes several UX and product experts, including Ariel, Ross, Mark, and others, sharing rich insights on cross-organizational collaboration and design practices. Ariel details a comprehensive 75-page journey map he developed for a city government project, emphasizing the importance of creating shared documentation and safe spaces for policy conversations. Ross shares his transition from engineering to UX driven by user stories and empathy, while Mark explains how APIs help coordinate requests for design resources across large teams, ensuring that workload is manageable and transparent. The group discusses techniques for empathizing with higher-level stakeholders, including understanding how they’re measured and aligning design goals with their success metrics. They tackle maintaining continuity as teams and members change by recommending thorough handoff documents and horizontal roles overseeing core experiences. Agile challenges are addressed through dual-track agile methodologies and A/B testing, allowing iterative design in short sprints. The importance of including support teams in design feedback loops is highlighted, with suggestions for tagging support tickets for visibility. Ariel also speaks about building an internal community of practice and design kits to encourage civic service design culture. Additionally, small human gestures like sending thank you cards across silos prove effective in fostering empathy. The panel underscores making documentation accessible and integrating technical writers within UX teams. The conversation weaves in practical examples and cultural tactics from companies like Honeywell, HP, and government agencies, all focusing on bridging organizational silos to deliver better user-centered products.
Key Insights
-
•
A detailed journey map for government services can span 75 pages and serve as a critical shared internal document to build understanding across commissioners, staff, and providers, as Ariel described.
-
•
Successful collaboration in government requires designers to learn enough policy to engage as trusted peers, creating safe spaces to surface real issues and invite constructive change.
-
•
Ross transitioned from engineering to UX by discovering inspirational user stories in product feedback that generated empathy and motivation to improve user experience.
-
•
Mark’s team created lightweight 'APIs' for other teams to request UX resources, including tracking states like accepted, in progress, or rejected, helping manage demand and transparency.
-
•
Empathizing with stakeholders higher up the org involves understanding how they are measured and what success means for their role, enabling better alignment of design goals.
-
•
To maintain continuity across feature teams with turnover, special onboarding sessions and 'going away' documents are critical handoff rituals that save time and preserve context.
-
•
Dual-track agile separates design and product discovery (one track) from development sprints (another), giving designers more runway to iterate and validate ideas.
-
•
Including support teams in scrums or regular meetings improves visibility of design-related customer issues; tagging support tickets enables focused review of design feedback.
-
•
Simple gestures like sending physical thank you cards across organizational silos can foster empathy and build cross-team relationships beyond technology.
-
•
Making documentation and toolkits in plain language, avoiding jargon, broadens access for cross-disciplinary teams and elevates the value of information design within UX.
Notable Quotes
"The consolidated view is really the invitation in to help get people excited and also help them see that we've created documentation that didn't exist previously."
"As a designer and leader in this space, I've had to learn a lot about policy so I can come in and have really deep discussions with policy folks as a peer."
"I started just searching for product name to look for bugs, but then found inspirational stories that helped me build empathy for users."
"We created APIs so people can submit ideas or resource requests in a simple structure, and then track their status from accepted to rejected."
"When I talk to stakeholders, I try to understand how they are measured and what success means for their role in the company."
"When someone swaps out on a feature team, that event needs a special onboarding: briefings and whiteboard sessions to transfer knowledge."
"Dual track agile means you have the dev sprint track and a separate design/product track that leads the dev track by several cycles."
"Invite support people to scrums or monthly engineering reviews so design can get visibility into common customer issues."
"Sending real physical thank you cards across silos surprises people and builds empathy and openness beyond what technology can do."
"We wrote our toolkits in plain English so people understand the tactics without getting lost in jargon—they can learn the jargon later."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Stop Wasting Research is really about thinking about research at scale and providing a big menu of different directions to try."
Jake BurghardtFinding More Inroads into Research Impact
February 20, 2026
"We cut the claims editing process in half—four pages and 10 steps down to one page and four steps."
Jen CardelloStandardizing Product Merits for Leaders, Designers, and Everyone
June 15, 2018
"We often say keep the big picture in mind and the devil’s in the details—system design bridges these two opposing needs."
Erin Hoffman-JohnThis Game is Never Done: Design Leadership Techniques from the Video Game World
November 6, 2017
"Design ops should coordinate initiatives, measure impact, and advocate for designer happiness as a business metric - Peter Bosma."
Bria Alexander Patrizia Bertini Peter Boersma Jon Fukuda Dave Malouf Theresa Slate Changying (Z) ZhengCharting the future of DesignOps: A community workshop
April 18, 2024
"Sometimes the loudest voices dominate, but asynchronous collaboration helps give quieter voices a chance to speak."
Jerome “Axle” BrownHow to Use Self-Directed Learning to Ensure Your Research Insights are Heard and Acted Upon
March 11, 2021
"Design systems are the language of implementation; they allow us to communicate ideas in a common format and process."
Mitchell BernsteinOrganizing Chaos: How IBM is Defining Design Systems with Sketch for an Ever-Changing AI Landscape
September 29, 2021
"You have to keep the fight, keep looking back at where you started."
JD Buckley Margot Dear Jim Kalbach Janaki KumarCOMMUNICATE: Discussion
June 14, 2018
"What if we are optimizing ourselves into relevance?"
Patrizia BertiniThe (r)evolution of designOps: It’s Time to Think (really) BIG
September 11, 2025
"You know you’ve succeeded as a coach when you put yourself out of a job by giving away the role."
Alissa BriggsHow to Coach Enterprise Experimentation
May 14, 2015
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What challenges does working under constraints at large tech companies create for UX designers?
How did Abraham Maslow’s Theory Z influence newer UX frameworks focused on self-transcendence?
How do product risk categories like feasibility, viability, desirability, and usability relate to research method choice?