Scaling design capacity across the Air Force

Summary

The challenge

Air Force product teams were building software, but each one absorbed the full cost of getting to production alone. A team that wanted to redesign an airman-facing tool had to find its own design expertise, run its own procurement, build its own infrastructure, and navigate security reviews from scratch — even if the team down the hall had just done the same thing. Most teams didn’t have designers, researchers, or product managers at all.

The result was predictable. Discovery stretched for months. Procurement cycles delayed vendor support before work even started. Security and compliance reviews added months. By the time a product reached airmen, the original need had often shifted — and the budget was spent.

The solution

We built the Design Studio as a permanent capability — hosted by BESPIN but designed to serve the Air Force and beyond. A core team builds USAF-wide design infrastructure: shared systems, toolkits, and frameworks that every engagement draws from. When specific programs need hands-on help, we scale additional capacity through task orders for embedded delivery, enablement, or both. The goal in every engagement: leave the team stronger than we found it.

Shared infrastructure is what makes the model compound. Every engagement draws from a growing suite of pre-authorized capabilities: a service design framework for structured discovery, two design systems — Carbon Forge for complex data-rich applications and Material Atlas for mobile-friendly products — and 10+ reusable toolkits that cut team ramp-up time. Because these assets are already security-cleared, teams skip months of compliance work that used to block every project independently. And because the core team maintains them between engagements, they appreciate over time.

The capability grew out of R&D originally designed to scale service design across government. A Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer with Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute in 2020 tested whether the discipline could take root in defense contexts. A Phase II with UC San Diego’s Design Lab validated the approach further. BESPIN sponsored the research and became the first internal consumer. Those phases matured into a Phase III indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract — with a $100M ceiling — that gave the Design Studio a fast, flexible acquisition pathway: task orders issued in weeks rather than months, primarily for Air Force programs, with civilian agencies like the CDC also leveraging the vehicle.

AFFMS II — the fitness tool every uniformed airman uses — got a full redesign. The Weather Systems Program Office transformed how multiple teams designed and delivered weather applications. The Office of Special Investigations automated workflows to clear a backlog of 100,000 criminal records. That track record drew interest from beyond the Air Force, with the CDC and others adopting the Design Studio’s capabilities for their own programs.

The results

• Compressed scoping-to-production timelines from years to under 12 weeks, with task orders issued in as few as three to four weeks through the Small Business Innovation Research Phase III acquisition pathway
• Trained dozens of practitioners in user-centered design through coaching, pairing, and a structured training program — building lasting internal capacity across the Air Force
• Established shared design infrastructure used by 12+ USAF customers, including two design systems (Carbon Forge and Material Atlas), a service design framework, and 10+ reusable toolkits that eliminate redundant work across engagements
• Served 20+ programs spanning fitness management, weather systems, aircraft maintenance, and criminal investigations — with civilian agencies like the CDC also adopting the capability