VA Platform Governance: Design Intent Study

Improving collaboration and clarity in VA.gov’s platform governance process

The Challenge

The VA’s Collaboration Cycle governs how teams deliver digital products on VA.gov and the VA Mobile App. During touchpoints of the Collaboration Cycle, participants, usually several representatives from a team, get feedback and guidance on their product/feature to ensure it meets VA.gov experience standards. Teams engage with the Collaboration Cycle throughout their product’s or feature’s lifecycle.

One key step—Design Intent—is often misunderstood or seen as burdensome by product teams. The Governance Team partnered with Service Design to evaluate and improve this critical touchpoint. From start to finish, this initiative took four weeks.

My role

  • UX Researcher

  • Service Designer

  • Workshop Planner and Facilitator

  • Stakeholder Communicator

Tools used

  • Zoom – Remote moderated research sessions

  • Mural – Affinity mapping, synthesis workshops, journey mapping

  • Confluence – Study guide documentation and research planning

  • Slack – Participant communication and coordination

  • Google Suite – Findings documentation and readout deck

Skills applied

  • Remote qualitative user research planning and facilitation

  • Research synthesis and affinity mapping

  • Journey mapping (individual and collective)

  • Service design thinking

  • Cross-functional collaboration

  • Communication and storytelling

  • Creating actionable recommendations

  • Strategic insight delivery

Goals

We set out to understand how teams experience the Design Intent process, identify pain points, and pinpoint opportunities to streamline and enhance clarity, adoption, and collaboration.

Process

  • Conducted 1:1 moderated research sessions with four platform teams, representing a range of experience with the Design Intent process.

  • Invited participants from various roles, including PMs, tech leads, designers, researchers, and content strategists.

  • Planned and led synthesis sessions to map journeys, identify shared and role-specific pain points, and surface improvement opportunities.

Result

Study Findings

  • While documentation exists, the process felt scattered across multiple tools (GitHub, Slack, Calendly), increasing cognitive load.

  • Many teams saw Design Intent as intimidating or redundant—until after participating.

  • Teams valued feedback but wanted clearer expectations and simpler steps upfront.

What We Delivered

  • Journey maps (individual + shared)

  • Synthesized insights and pain points

  • Actionable recommendations

  • A readout deck to brief stakeholders and socialize findings with other VA.gov Platform teams

Impact

Our insights directly informed improvements to the Design Intent and Staging Review processes. The Governance Team responded quickly to implement changes based on our findings.

Shared Insights user journey in progress

  • “We are now making changes to the Staging Review process based off the Design Intent findings. We couldn't have done this without the great work your team did!”

    – VA.gov Platform Product Manager