ALIGN is a four-year project aimed at establishing a digital platform for the community of practice centred on gendered norms affecting adolescents and young adults.

A community of practice has grown around the term 'gender norms', and this community has an interest in working together to learn how gender norms change.

'We define norms as the often implicit, informal rules which people abide by, held in place (and influenced) by beliefs, behaviours and practices (and sometimes perceived rewards and sanctions) and bound into the values people and societies accept implicitly, accept reluctantly or actively contest.' - Project ALIGN, 2017

ALIGN initially intends to primarily meet the needs of researchers and thought leaders, encouraging knowledge exchange and learning on gender norms.

The project is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and is led by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

In order to deliver the initial platform quickly we started the project with a technical review to look at existing software that might meet the immediate needs. We then met with the team at ODI for a discovery workshop. This had an emphasis on values, audience and mission, which informed a branding process. We created a visual presence that reflects ALIGN’s values. The platform was then developed using agile methods, allowing the client to prioritise which features to implement in the initial round of work.

After the initial content was added, we worked with ALIGN’s users to test the platform. We interviewed five users via video call. We watched how they interacted with the site and asked questions along the way. It’s always great to get direct user feedback, and this created useful ideas for future improvements and made it clear what the next priorities were.