An acquisition can completely upend an organization, changing how we work—and whom we work with—often with no plan to manage the shift. When Accela acquired eight companies in 2015, we brought on hundreds of employees and dozens of products, but only one designer. Our UX team was now faced with integrating products from unfamiliar industries by working with teams unfamiliar with UX.

Ken Hoffmann and Nova Wehman-Brown will discuss how setting aside their egos, and leaning on concrete data and user-centered design (internally and externally) built trust among teammates and turned chaos into collaboration in a fairly short period of time.