UXDX Community London: How to Build Products Without Sign-offs
Join the London UXDX community for an evening focused on what happens when design teams move beyond traditional sign-off processes and build a culture of trust, accountability, and shared ownership. This is a practical session for people across Product, UX, Design, and Dev who want to make faster decisions, raise quality, and create better ways of working together.
✨ Talk 1: Empowering Design Teams
Gessica Puglielli, Head of Product Design, MPB
Traditional sign-off processes can slow down creativity and decision-making in design teams. In this keynote, Gessica will share her experience leading MPB’s design team through a transformation from top-down approvals to a culture of accountability and trust.
The session will explore how this shift improved team morale, unlocked creativity, and sped up the design process, while also tackling the challenges that come with reducing micromanagement.
She’ll cover:
How to move away from top-down approvalsWhat helps create accountability without adding frictionHow trust can improve both team morale and creative qualityPractical ways to reduce micromanagement and empower teams
✨ Talk 2: From Sign Offs to Shared Accountability
Gessica Puglielli, Head of Product Design, MPBAJ King, Senior UX Researcher at Houseful
This interactive forum turns the keynote into a working session. Together, we will unpack what it really takes to replace sign-offs with clear ownership, fast decisions, and high-quality outcomes.
The discussion will focus on the practical building blocks that help teams make this shift successfully, from defining decision rights to setting quality bars and handling risk without slipping back into approval-heavy ways of working.
You’ll explore:
How to define decision rights clearlyWhat lightweight critique looks like in practiceHow to maintain quality without formal sign-offsWays to align stakeholders and keep momentum when trust is still being built
📅 Agenda
18:00 to 18:30 Opening and networking
18:30 to 18:40 Welcome from the UXDX Ambassadors
Hosted by Alishba Shakoor, Lead Product Designer at Vocational Training Hub, and AJ King, Senior UX Researcher at Houseful
18:40 to 19:00 Empowering Design Teams, Gessica Puglielli
19:00 to 19:30 From Sign Offs to Shared Accountability, Gessica Puglielli and AJ King
19:30 Networking and snacks
About UXDX
UXDX helps teams move from project delivery to empowered, autonomous product teams. We host global conferences and free community events that bring together UX, Product, Design, and Engineering to share how real teams build better products, faster together.