VA Platform Governance: Design Intent Study

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs governs how teams deliver digital products on VA platforms using a dedicated Governance team and process. During touchpoints of this process, participants, usually several representatives from a team, get feedback and guidance on their product or feature to ensure it meets VA’s experience standards. Teams engage with the governance team throughout their product’s or feature’s lifecycle.

The Challenge

One key step in the process is called Design Intent, which ensures that teams align with VA.gov standards before creating any high-fidelity artifacts. Because each product has different needs, not all parts are required, which can lead to misunderstanding and uncertainty, adding unplanned effort to time-sensitive tasks.

My role

UX Research Lead

Service Designer

Tools used

Zoom

Mural

Confluence

Skills applied

Remote Qualitative User Research Planning and Facilitation

Research Synthesis

Journey Mapping

Service Design Thinking

Strategic insight delivery

Goals

  • Understand how teams experience the Design Intent process

  • Identify the challenges and the differing needs of team members who are new to the process vs. those who are experienced with it

  • Evaluate opportunities to streamline guidance and enhance clarity, adoption, and collaboration

Process

I led the Service Design team's efforts to evaluate and provide recommendations for improving this critical touchpoint. From start to finish, this initiative took four weeks to complete.

  • Created the research plan and conversation guide

  • 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 Product Managers, Tech Leads, Designers, Researchers, and Content Strategists.

  • Planned and led synthesis sessions with the Service Design team to map user journeys, identify shared and role-specific pain points, and aggregate improvement recommendations.

Result

Study Findings

  • Although documentation for Design Intent already existed, the process felt scattered across multiple tools (GitHub, Slack, Calendly), which increased cognitive load

  • Many teams saw Design Intent as intimidating or redundant until they participated and learned that it was friendly and collaborative

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

What We Delivered

  • Journey maps: Individual journey maps per level of experience, and a journey map for shared attributes

  • Synthesized challenges and insights

  • 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 Governance Product Manager