Building Software That Works for People Who Don't Look Like Your Team

Most conversations about building better software happen in rooms full of developers, product managers, and executives. The communities most affected by what gets built, such as migrants, refugees, women, young people, elderly people, and Indigenous leaders, are rarely in those rooms and almost never shaping the design. This session is a ground-level account of what happens when you flip that. Drawing on community programme delivery in Perth and a published national benchmark covering all 8 Australian states and territories, it covers: Why "safe" and "usable" look very different when you design with marginalised communities rather than for them What a state-by-state readiness benchmark reveals about governance gaps most organisations haven't noticed yet What happens when executives try to move from policy to actual practice and where they get stuck Why Perth's demographic and geographic position makes it an ideal place to test assumptions that get baked in elsewhere You will leave with a concrete framework for asking who is and who is not in your design process and why that shapes every product decision downstream. Whether you write code, run teams, or shape product direction, this applies to your work.