Buy-in is one of the biggest challenges in any organisation, made harder in a large and mature organisation. But how did a team from Africa's Talking get over this hurdle and rolled out 4+ products this year alone. In this session, Anne will talk through how she created alignment between UX and engineering that allowed for more efficient processes and better product release times. She will touch on: - How to adopt your communication style depending on your stakeholders; - How to document new processes of communication; - The importance of implementation to ensure overall alignment

1. Better Together
Anne Njoroge
Engineers, Designers. ALL Stakeholders

2. Why this topic?
It is the most important determinant in the success of a product in
functionality and in achieving business objectives.

3. Kazzo V1

4. Kazzo V2

5. WeQuill V1

6. WeQuill V2

7. Strategies That Have worked
Reduce the Chaos
01
Speak the Language
03
Building strong design & engineering
relationships. All stakeholders
02

8. Reduce the chaos
Dig in, do your job well in product strategy.
01

9. What are we working on?
Great Documentation
Clearly defined users, and
prioritization matrix on the
problem being addressed
Bring everyone along
Loop in all stakeholders from
the get go.
Clear Strategy
Have a great design
system, component
libraries, and use cases.

10. Build Strong relationships between designers and engineers.
All stakeholders.
We are Humans First.
Empathy.
We are collaborators.
02

11. Smaller, leaner teams
They help make communication more efficient.

12. Establish a working Rhythm
- When and how to share design work?
- Which design decisions need to be made first?
- What’s hard to change later on?
- How to give feedback and when to review milestones.

13. Speak the Language
- Understand the technical language in the craft and the
technical demands of all features on the frontend and
backend.
- Technical constraints in place?
- Have a common language between the teams
03

14. Design is Not For Philosophy
Its for Life.