Embedding Strategists & Standardizing Workflows in Canada’s Parliament
Bringing senior UX practitioners into a high-pressure environment to streamline workflows and elevate internal service standards.
Background: A Longstanding Partnership in Public Sector Design
For years, the House of Commons has leaned on Outwitly whenever their teams needed more UX hands — and minds — in the mix. We’ve helped refresh their internal intranet, build a mobile voting app, and even support broadcast teams during the pandemic. Every time, the goal has been the same: make the tools people use every day easier, clearer and more accessible.
So when the online service request forms that staff rely on to submit tickets and get support started slowing people down — unclear steps, inconsistent layouts, too much effort — they reached out again. To overhaul these ServiceNow forms quickly and thoughtfully, the Digital Business Enablement Services (DBES) team needed senior UX support, and fast.
Roles Staffed
- UX Researcher & Strategist
- Design Strategist
- Service Designer
Challenge: Limited UX Bandwidth for a Critical Service
Design leaders in government know the drill: lots of responsibility, lean teams, tight timelines and a steady stream of “can we get this out the door?” It’s a balancing act — and the DBES team was feeling it.
Here’s what they were up against:
An internal design team stretched thin. With only a handful of UX practitioners supporting dozens of projects, there simply wasn’t enough bandwidth to take on a forms overhaul without dropping something else.
No clear picture of what wasn’t working. The team was deep in day-to-day delivery, making it tough to step back and see the patterns. They needed trained eyes to audit the forms, benchmark what “good” should look like, and spot usability and accessibility issues that were slipping through.
A tight turnaround with real impact attached. They had three months — onboarding, to research, to design — to improve forms used daily by MPs, administrators and public service staff.
A need for strategic, cohesive direction. Because the forms had been built at different times, they didn’t match in structure or experience. The team needed someone who could look across the whole set, dig into the issues and help bring consistency back in.
Solution: Embedding Senior Practitioners to Drive the Work Forward
We helped the House of Commons find the right support quickly — the kind of practitioners who could jump in, see the bigger picture and still get into the details.
Here are some highlights of the hiring and onboarding process:
Specialized, pre-vetted practitioners. Because all of our practitioners are vetted by UX experts, we could pull from a pool of thousands and present bilingual, senior candidates with experience across research, interaction design, service design, accessibility and testing — within days.
A single round of interviews. Of the four candidates we put forward, three were selected right away. No long interview loops, no extra admin — just more time for the DBES team to stay focused on what mattered.
Fast ramp-up into research and testing. With deep experience behind them, the hires got moving immediately. Onsite in Ottawa and remotely, they dug into the forms, mapped pain points and started benchmarking the current state to guide new UX guidelines.
Strategic mindsets and smooth integration. Vetted for crucial soft skills, the practitioners took initiative from day one — meeting with teams, clarifying needs and figuring out where they could add the most value. They aligned early with stakeholders on objectives, and proactively filled gaps in team needs.
Results: Raising UX Standards Across Internal Processes
With senior UX practitioners embedded into the DBES team, the House of Commons expanded its design capacity and made fast progress on a complex internal service. One specialist was even asked to stay on for three additional months to help carry the work through implementation.
DBES ended up with:
Research done by people who know what to look for. With strong experience in research and accessibility, the practitioners ran interviews, surveys and usability tests that surfaced the issues genuinely shaping the experience. Their analysis highlighted the highest-impact problems and gave DBES a focused, credible starting point.
Artefacts built to align teams, not just document findings. The contractors translated the data into personas, journey maps and process flows that clarified behaviours, decision points and constraints. These artefacts helped stakeholders empathize with users and became shared reference points across DBES and partner teams.
Design direction shaped by practitioners who validate as they go. They brought information architectures and wireframes to subject matter experts early, checked assumptions and refined the direction, de-risking design work and ensuring it would align with real operational needs.
Contributions that strengthened the organization’s UX and Accessibility Maturity Model.
Drawing on expertise in WCAG, bilingual delivery and inclusive design, the practitioners added clarity criteria to the internal maturity model — guiding how internal services are assessed and improved going forward.
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