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
"Screen reader users scored in the low to mid 50s on our scale while magnification users scored around 70 and alternative navigation users around 60."
Sam ProulxSUS: A System Unusable for Twenty Percent of the Population
September 29, 2021
"This is a just-do-it moment. Ask for forgiveness, not permission."
Doug PowellDesignOps and the Next Frontier: Leading Through Unpredictable Change
September 11, 2025
"The pod system gave leads more credibility and leadership opportunities while supporting junior growth."
Sarah Kinkade Mariana Ortiz-ReyesDesign Management Models in the Face of Transformation
June 8, 2022
"Getting people who don’t communicate well to at least work together on a single thing is the first step to innovating together."
Jon Fukuda Amy Evans Ignacio Martinez Joe MeersmanThe Big Question about Innovation: A Panel Discussion
September 25, 2024
"Product is designed. Design is product. We are looking at the same ecosystem in the bigger picture."
Wendy JohanssonBe a Product Boss!
December 6, 2022
"To influence others, you must be willing to be influenced and change your mind to align with organizational goals."
Abbey Smalley Sylas SouzaScaling UX Past the Size of Your Team
January 8, 2024
"Zoom fatigue is real, people are not necessarily keen to go into another Zoom meeting even if they think it’s valuable."
Shelby SwitzerMaking Space for Community Knowledge-sharing in a Distributed World
December 10, 2021
"We wanted a great participant experience no matter how many observers are on the call."
Roy Opata OlendeHow Zapier Uses ‘All Hands Research’ to Increase Exposure to Users
August 6, 2020
"Usability is kind of the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs of a product experience."
Dave Malouf Amy ThibodeauPanel: Design Systems and Documentation
November 7, 2017
