# In conversation — Sam Alderton-Johnson — session 2026-08-27T06:00:00.000Z → 2026-08-27T06:50:00.000Z

_743 transcript lines · 11 slides_

## Transcript

Add a single invisible disability question to your next research screener. Or take one screen and run the three audit questions over it. This will show how inclusive design can begin with one simple thoughtful change. Either one is enough. Inclusive design doesn't need to start with an overhaul. It can start with one question that makes hidden needs easier to see. And the person best placed to spot these problems they might already be on your team because lived experience is a form of expertise. But the work isn't just about getting the person in the room. It's making sure that the room is one where they can speak, be heard and not be left carrying the whole burden alone. And that's where the work starts. It's not just with representation, but with an environment that values lived expertise and makes it safe to use. And the question isn't whether your users are paying the masking tax. It's whether you've been paying attention. That's the real work. See the invisible cost. Design for it. And stop making people carry it alone. Thank you so much guys. Thank you. And thank you for persevering. We're gonna switch over. I encourage you if you wanna talk to Josephine about that topic, grab her if you're willing, Josephine, after the last session, to talk about that a little bit more. Alright. Sam and I need microphones we're just gonna do that while we, get ready for this last little session. Yes, I have two mics. Yes. So the idea of this one, there's when, Sam and I were talking about him being here, we couldn't really settle on a particular topic that we might get him to talk about. And so we came up with this idea in conversation, and talk through a bunch of stuff instead, and be in a position. I can do that. Yep. Alright. Excellent. This is fun. Then I've got a separate one. So because we're recording a podcast, we're gonna have like two bits So let me put this down for a second so I can do this. Good thing I'm not wearing a dress. Terrible. No. Alright. So real pleasure to introduce Sam. To Sam's founder of Impact Policy that does, bunch of work with government engaging with community, has done a a a lot of work with the justice system, in social justice and a range of other things. We'll talk about it a little bit. But I'm really glad that you're here to join me on stage, Sam. Welcome. Thank you. Should we sit? I guess so. Alright. Just one mic on. Can we hear you? Can you hear me? Yes? No? Yeah, man. Alright. Yeah. I heard you, man. It wasn't the hat. Now we did. Just the angle of the camera was Oh, yeah. No worries. There we go. Okay. So welcome, Sam. Yeah. Welcome. Thanks for having us. Real pleasure. Now, can you tell us, just to begin, tell me a little bit about the podcast? Yep. What do you cover? Who do you who do you get out to? Yeah. Great. So So we run a podcast called the Impact Policy Podcast. It's our first time recording a live episode of that. Which is really exciting and cool. Everyone gets to be a part of. But basically, Impact Policy is a social policy consulting firm. So we really try and bring people, into those episodes that have lived experience, that have professional expertise, so we can really try and unpack a lot of that sort of stuff. I'm an aboriginal man that grew up here in Glebe and Redfern. My family from Eurea Nation Down In Eden. And, so a lot of our episodes have a really strong representation of aboriginal voices Mhmm. At the forefront. Of how we start to really think about some of the some of the biggest sort of social policy things at which trying to navigate, today. That's awesome. Yeah. How many episodes have you done so far? It's been a few. Yeah, man. We're up to episode 55. Yeah. That's great. So, yeah. We're going well. We're going well. Yeah. It's on YouTube. It's on Spotify. It's on Apple. We've got really a number of episodes there specific to this design sector as well. So we do a lot of work in co design. And so we've got some amazing practitioners, far more experience than me that have shared their expertise in there. And, a lot of people have have referenced that as really valuable learning resources as well in terms of connecting that to, yeah, the work on the ground. So it's been good. That's great. You've been here for the day. Has anything sort of jumped out or stood out for you, amongst the talks? I know, like, we were talking Yeah. During one of the breaks, but what are you what did you wanna pick up on? Yeah. Look, I was a bit nervous. Coming in here to speak today because, yeah, a lot of the work that we do is in social policy, and it's in very much working with community on the ground. Our most recent work is around working in prisons, with kids coming out of jail and trying to design services post release to support young people's, transition back into community. We're doing research around evaluation, design, and we're doing a lot of stuff in foster care and out of home care. And so coming here today and looking at the program, I sort of thought like, oh, I really hope that I can add some value to the audience. You know, maybe there's not a lot of people here that work in social policy in terms of design. But we're listening to the talks. There's so many threads that connect across. You know. Your real constant theme around measuring what matters. Has been really, like, really significant for me to hear and to take away from. You know, we have we have a we have a real crisis today in in a in a Australia in terms of the out of home care system. Yeah. Particularly in New South Wales, we have more kids removed from their families than at the height of the stolen generation. Per capita, we have, over 30% of kids that are taken from their families taken because of issues around neglect. Which when you dive a bit deeper into the statistics, it's it's it's more issues around poverty and disadvantaged. So that but that's widely accepted in the the minister's really committed to reforming that that that sector. And so we're a big part of being involved in that journey. And one of the presentations again talks about, you know, measuring what matters and how do we look at metrics around you know, you talk about user experience. Well, we're talking about kids coming through and out of out of home care system and what's that experience look like, and how do we really measure what matters when we talk about, that journey and and and designing that sort of, trajectory. For young people to you talk about kids coming out of prison, I mean that whole sentence is fucked up. But, what, like, what ages are we talking about? Yeah. Look, kids from as young as 10 can be put into custody. And, you know, so like, the majority of kids sit around sort of 50, sixty sixteen years old. The work that we do in that sort of space really came about. So before impact policy, we sat in the public sector. And I don't have a design background, but I was a social worker for a long time. And there's this real friction, I think, for blackfellas in community that for so long we've been being designed for Yeah. Rather than with. And we see the manifestation of that with, you know, a range of social issues that we experience today whether it's you know, the life expectancy of our people, whether it's over representation in prison, whatever that might be. But in government, in the public sector, my introduction to design was procuring designers to come in and work with us around how we we would design the very project we're working on today. And some of those early experiences were fantastic. Amazing designers came in from a social policy lens that really brought people together and and really meaningfully designed great outcomes. But I saw this trend where suddenly, co design became co opted into every second project being labeled a co design journey when almost it was anything but. Yeah. We reflected on that a lot, particularly as black fellas. And we felt that a lot of that was connected to the history of overconsultation of our people. And the fact that often that overconsultation would lead to fatigue, would lead to little change, would which then would be which then would, heighten the challenge with engagement with our communities. So then, co design came in as almost this this magic bullet, you know, this Trojan horse but I wasn't really, achieving that sort of stuff. So we fell into that world almost in spite of it Yeah. And really tried to champion, does what does meaningful code design really look like? And so at that point in time, there wasn't a lot of aboriginal professionals pushing that and and and driving that. And a lot of people would come to us and say, like, oh, oh, other designers in the sector, other people in the public sector, and they come to us and say oh, can you give us You know, you've got to give us a blueprint or Yeah. Or a process map. How do how do we do this co design with with with aboriginal people, with any any communities? Yep. And we wrestled with that for a long time because, it was a real friction for us because we knew that, like, no no co design project should look the same. They should always look different. Because each community is different. A 100% exactly. And that yeah. And it's not specific to our people. It's all communities. Right? When we think about co design. So we sort of sat with that for a long time. We and we come across this quote about the river. Mhmm. And it's this idea that you never step into the same river twice because both you and that river are in a constant state of change. And we love that, you know, it lent into that that that lens for us as black follows in terms of connection to country, But it really connected a lot of dots for us in terms of how we thought about community and design. And so that became our sort of framework for how we built out talking about how to think about co design. So now we do a lot of work particularly, you know, a lot of people have talked about research Yep. And thinking about how we think about research design. And so we start to think about, you know, co designing research how we start to think about, how we plan for project work, you know, whether it's UX, world or not. And starting to use that framework that we've got to talk about that more. Yeah. I'm pointing to Chandra Harrison up there. Hello? Who's spoke, really well yesterday afternoon about a program of research around air travel and and what it's like to travel with varying disabilities. Yep. In an environment that's really not well designed for any of a whole host of Mhmm. Conditions. And and it was it was a lovely case study that you gave us yesterday, Chandra. Thank you for that. But it's interesting the one of the things that I took from from that work and from that, that project was the degree to which the program itself needed to be tailored and customized to the individuals that you recruited. So yes, you were recruiting a variety of different conditions and and and different needs. But subsequently looking at it and saying, well now that I've got this person, now that I've got this person, I need to tailor it. I need to shift my expectations. Our timing needs to be different. What we can expect needs change. Mhmm. And I think that was really, really good lesson for the audience yesterday and I encourage everyone if you can, when you can, to have a look at that talk. It's such an important point and it comes back as Walter the the talk just before us as well around lived experience Mhmm. And really embedding lived experience into the design journey. You know, we're we're really bullish around making sure that that's at the forefront. When we talk about the river, we talk about the pebbles of the river And we use pebbles as a metaphor for lived experience. You know. When you're about to step in the river, you're stepping across a range of different pebbles, but no pebbles is the same. And it's the same when we think about our communities. A lot of people think about community as this homogeneous group. Yeah. Same thing with with aboriginal communities. You know, we've consulted with community, but but what does that mean in the design journey? Mhmm. We talk about the prison system work that we're doing. When we started that, we sort of said we really need to be hearing from young people in in terms of what we're trying to design. And and and they went, yeah, that's that's fantastic. Like, let's hold a a a a workshop at the town hall, or let's do some stuff in the high school. And like, that's that's amazing because You've always is so underrepresented in the design journey anyway. But we had to we had to go we had to go like, well, actually hang on. What we're talking about is actually really making sure that the voices of the young people that are the end users of what we're trying to design together that that they're at the center of these conversations. You know. Because those young people in prison, they couldn't be part of the rest of the design journey alongside the broader community. So starting with those voices of kids in prison made sure that when we went and had those conversations more broadly with community, but they were informed by those voices, and though those voices had weight. And that went other people outside of those outside of the kids in prison said, oh, maybe it should look like this, or maybe it should be based there. We had the ability to give those kids a voice and go, yeah, that might be really valuable. But what we've actually heard from these fellas out of Grafton is that, like, this is actually really important. And straight away, you see this this massive friction around co design with power. Yeah. And who's holding power. Yeah. And that was an opportunity for us to actually try and really rebalance a bit of power and give that back to the young people in the process that were the most disempowered, but ultimately the ones that were gonna be impacted by the most throughout that design journey. And I think the the talk before us and obviously the case study as well, it really helps to reinforce I think, Kaye Mercurio in their work around co design and participatory methods and cocreation of services sort of sets out this idea that there are six levels of codatine. And what you're describing is up in that sort of thick floor six realm Absolutely. Where you've got a real shift in the power dynamic and who controls or who ultimately to decides what gets delivered out into the world. And how much say do we give, give, but how much how much of that power ends up in the hands of the people who are actually gonna be most impacted by it. And a lot of what gets called co design Yeah. Is only in the research phase It's more consultative than really participatory method. Mhmm. And it ultimately doesn't influence and doesn't allow that power, to shift, in ways that really gives them a say or an, you know, much more than a voice or input into that process. Definitely. Like if if you're a designer in this room here and you're you know, you find yourself in the co design world and on a project journey, the ultimate question is what am I willing to relinquish as part of this journey together with community? Mhmm. You know, what power am I willing to give up? You know, I may my organization, my team, my own you know, design, lens might see a path forward. But the community I'm designing alongside might see something different, might identify something different, And am I am I willing you know, what what parts of this journey am I willing to let go as part of that? And I think the friction that we find, we work you know, 90% of our work is with the public sector. So the most inflexible, you know, predetermined sort of place that you could just try and design alongside. But when we've seen the most success is always when those public servants or those leaders recognize that. And they they pivot and they respond and and and do that. And where we see the most, you know, detrimental impact is when and that well, that's where the code design becomes harmful. Is when we keep calling it co design, but we're not relinquishing any power in decision making. Yeah. We're just expecting people to come sit with us Yep. Consult with them as, you know, becomes just a consultation and engagement process Yeah. To but yeah. I had a funny moment in some research. Recently. But someone, from the client organization sat in on on one of the sessions. And, you know, like we had research objectives, we had topics that we were sort of trying to cover, this kind of stuff, if I asked a question, and the person went down a path of talking about that topic. Which was not in in the observer's mind relevant. And you could see them get antsy. Right? Like I could see them visibly getting antsy. And after the session and I didn't I didn't interrupt the participant. I let them talk about it because it was clearly of interest and relevance to them. And this is the point. I asked a question and they responded in a way that made sense to them. And I allowed them to respond. And afterwards, the observer was like, why did you let them just rabbit on about that thing? You know, like it was it wasn't relevant. Like we're not interested in it. Yeah. He fucking cares. But that's that's the that's the It's not it's not up to you in that moment to decide what's happening. Alright? Like that's that's you imposing your idea of what's important on them. And that's like step one, I think, in Cototyme. Needs to be what's important has to come from Mhmm. Our audience. Well, it's also even deeper than that in terms of It's that's it's relationality, you know. It's this is relational work, and that precurses the design journey. You know, when you come into aboriginal communities, when you come into, you know, communities and you're doing, like, social work, before we even start designing together. We have to we have to know each other. We have to like each other. Have to trust each other before we go on that journey. As black fellows, I have to know you know, who's this person from, you know? What's their intentions? How can their work help me? I'm not interested in does this person have a PHD. Does this person graduated from the best design school in the country? Could not care less? Yeah. I saw the post of your Saw that post. I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I you know, and I'm not anti the academy either. But that's the reality on the ground and that's why it is so relational this work. And that's where the biggest, you know, I will lean into the public sector because that's the majority of our work, but I recognize it might not for a lot of people here. But that's where they really struggle is because, you know, they're stuck on super tight time frames, predetermined budgets, ministerial agendas. Mhmm. And the most well meaning designers and public servants trying to do the right thing and just hamstrung you know, in in those sorts of settings. And so they hear like you heard, you know, old uncle or someone saying something and it might not absolutely be relevant to the design process and journey. And they're getting they're feeling the frustration of those constraints. But that's what we talk about when we talk about, someone talked about the conditions for design. Yep. So like that's when we're making an assessment around the code design journey, these are the opportunities for us to actually sit there as designers and go, look we started calling this co design but really, like, the conditions that exist here are telling us that what community actually are here for is a really appropriate and accessible consultation process. Because we've already predetermined what's happening at the end. So we're not really designing anything together. Yeah. So let's build those conditions as opposed to trying to force this co design metric when it's, you know, what's in reality might look different. People who work in commercial environments for for profit organizations will be familiar with this idea that one of the first hurdles that an an idea has to pass is whether or not it's financially worth it to the organization. And a lot of good ideas never make it out of you know, like, never get beyond a post it note kind of thing because there's this sort of very rapid sense of we're not gonna make any money out of that. Can't there's no profit in that one. Yeah. So let's let's not waste our time exploring that idea because you know, like it'll never fly. Mhmm. And it's worse if you're actually eating into the profit so let alone being profit neutral or cost neutral, but if you're potentially eating into the profit of a profit making organization, well then that's even worse. Yeah. Yeah. So hands up who's run into that type of scenario where I did Yeah. I didn't think I'd be alone. Yeah. And it's frustrating. And it's frustrating to sort of be in an environment where you know that the range of ideas that you can ultimately act on aren't being judged on the basis of merit or the resources available that are really being judged on the basis of we make money off this or not. One of the things that I've been writing a book, and one of the things that we sort of talk about in this book is the way in which our our model of our economy and what we accept as being normal in a sort of neoliberal capitalist society that we're in, is that the decisions on what gets done is largely shaped by whether or not someone can make money off it Mhmm. And not whether or not it's actually a value. We're not whether or not it's of use or necessity even sometimes. But whether or not someone can turn a profit from it. And we're in this sort of really wild situation increasingly where despite the evidence that says we should be doing one group of things because they're non economic, and non, you know, non profitable, we're just not doing them. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, large swaths of the of the population over here are crying out for them but people who control access to the funding to do them mean, well, there's nothing in it for me. So we're not going to do it. Yeah. It's almost the polar opposite in some ways in some social policies. Spaces because we've got this plethora of evidence that reinforces how much money taxpayers waste, you know, for example Yeah. Locking up kids that doesn't reduce offending. You know, we have all this evidence that really supports and reinforces what we know to be true and what can really invest and reduce those risk factors around some of those broader social factors that we experience. But you know, that, you know, more of a political environment controls some of that agenda and yeah, we see that play out. But I think if I come back and think about some of the stuff that I've been hearing today and and thinking about that through a co design lens, Thinking a massive, experience that we have. You talked about Kame and Khercher's Mhmm. Sort of six stages of co creation that that they talk about. And one of our podcast episodes is with them and it's one of the ones that I referred to. So if you do get a chance to check out any of those, episodes, that's the one as a designer that you'll get the most value out of. But they talk they talk about those six stages, and one of them the first one is co planning. Yeah. And I I love that. Right? Because we go and we deliver training in the public sector around co design, and the first thing we do is like people will talk about all the problems and challenges with co design and and what they're trying to with. We go, put your hand up if you've ever written a project plan and everyone puts their hand And that's mad. Like, you've all done a code design project plan. Now put your hands up if you've ever designed a project plan alongside the communities that you're intending to do this work with. Hands got down. No one puts a hand And I go, okay. And then so, like, we're talking about these challenges around timelines, budgets, priorities, and all that sort of thing. What we can see is this massive opportunity at the forefront that again comes back to that core point around relationality Yeah. And relationships first. And and and really investing at the front end before the design journey even starts. In terms of communication, engagement, and relationship building. And using that as the precursor to design. And starting with, you know, co planning together and deciding together, sharing that agency and autonomy with the community that we're trying to design with. And letting them determine like, you know, obviously, there's there's constraints organizationally or whatever. And sometimes that can't change. But more often than not, there is the opportunity for us to unpack and understand at the forefront. Like, okay, community, you're telling us gonna take six months. We only you know, you can unpack that stuff early. And, the biggest impacts that we've ever seen is when we've been able to do that at the start. And if we haven't been able to do that at the start, we've had leadership. That's recognized the investment in terms of being able to pivot and not being like, like glued to a project plan like it's a binding contract that if it shifts, you know, like the whole world's gonna explode. Yep. Yeah. We're just wondering if stuff. Yeah. It won't explode. Yeah. We can quite happily shift their timeline if their priorities change. So Totally. Well we came into a there was this case in Bouhreeville, and it's thirty years ago. Three kids went missing and were murdered within the space of three months. Mhmm. It's it's a very famous case. You can Google it. There's stack of stuff. It went to the high court of Australia, less than ten years ago. It was the first case to ever test the double jeopardy laws in Australia that exist. Our job coming in there was off the back of the parliamentary inquiry to co design a whole of government social policy response for that community. Okay. And, they said you've got six months to do it. And I was like, five, six months? That's amazing. I'm used to like six weeks. Like, this is gonna be incredible. And so, you know, without going through that whole journey and that life that that whole process, it took us six months because of the community we're going into, the history, the trauma, the that that justice journey was running parallel to our social policy agenda Mhmm. Around the co designing this response. It took us six months to build a relationship done understand how to do that work and design that work together. Luckily, because of the leadership and resources, you know, it it blew out to eighteen months. We had the investment to do that. And that's an extreme response. But it's just an example of how, if we're designing with communities, that that piece at the forefront before we even start this design together is just so critical. Yeah. Who has, sort of undertaken research where there is that much investment in in relationship building with an audience before the work begins. Like where we're talking weeks, Marvin? Yep? At transport? Yep. Okay. Awesome. And then some work with the British Council. Or one, the education is important Yep. Because the kids, they are so disproportionately poor and disadvantaged. They are daily wage workers, and their parents would rather want them to work on a daily wage, you know, wages, to whatever make the living, and not study because study is a cost, education is a cost, whereas you know, the other one is the income for them. So engaging with those communities and the scale was so big, we're talking about more than the entire population of Australia. For the number of kids out of school in Pakistan. It was quite an overwhelming task for us in that sense to build those community relationships. And I wouldn't say that it was a 100% success because it was a massive project. But we were able to influence at some level. On the flip side, who's been involved in research activities where the relationship building is something along the lines of, Steve, this is David. Here's your 04:00. Yeah? Certainly. Yes. A lot more hands. I mean, that investment is a complete shift in the way like a lot of sort of the research part and certainly the research occurs, you know, towards the front of these projects. It's a it's a complete reversal of the way in which the, you know, the whole program is laid out. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it can be it can be really easy for for us as designers for teams to look at if we use research as an example, to look at the pro the project as a whole and be and and and just make the decision or the assumption that, well, this this research can't be co designed. There's too much things that, you know, and we've experienced that in practice. But if you actually look a little bit more deeper, maybe there's some significant parts of a research project that can be co designed, and that can share the most power in agency as well. So for example, we're evaluating, Prism, court project. It's an alternative court in the Downing Center. Mhmm. And they came to us. There's a quantitative, part of that journey, and they came to us and said, we're gonna do a qualitative evaluation of it success, but we really wanna co design the method. Right. You know, we can't co design the whole evaluation, but we wanna share as much decision making around how this should actually happen. And so same thing, we went and spent time in the cells underneath the courthouse, interviewing the people around how that sort of stuff should happen, all the stakeholders. And so at the end of now we're in the data collection phase right now. But the trust, the participation, and the quality of the data that we're getting is so much stronger Because the people that we're going back to speak to, they either helped inform how the evaluation was developed, or they know someone who's like, yeah. Now we've seen them fellas. They came and spoke to us, and, yeah, they're here to do this in again, it's a relationality thing because they've they haven't just not just some random that's popped up and said, hey, man. I'm evaluating a court. Tell me your life story. Tell me about it. It's like, no. Like, what brings you here? Like a day. You know, like, Maz spoke to them last week or Yeah. Gabe he he he helped them know what they're doing. So, like, trust him. Like, they're right. Share your story. And, like, the data we're getting is so much stronger because of that. And again, it comes back to like, power, and agency, and voice, you know, like, we're not just saying, like, you can only do this one way. And I think we talked about the masking stuff, in the presentation before us, and really making sure we're designing stuff with those sorts of things front of mind too, That that that's what's critical. And so I guess my message is like, I've heard research come up a lot, and this is a co design yarn, but like there is opportunities to take that mindset to how you think about that work. So if you're designing a user experience journey and you've and it's a research project, and you're thinking about the end users, well, how can you bring their voice into the research journey and maybe have them inform some of that sort of method success or how you test, you know, whether this is viable to proceed. But, yeah. Josephine made the point that it can be like the way in which we recruit Kenneth itself be a filtering mechanism where we start to lose voices before we even realize that we're losing voices. Absolutely. Can you like, how do you how do you deal with that aspect of it? Yeah. I think that that one jumped out at me particularly because from the from that masking perspective particularly, we're working on social policy, when we're working on, you know, really complex community disadvantage and stuff like that, we know that there's a really significantly under under under under diagnosis of people living with mental health, living with you know, neurodiversity and and different things like that. That might impact participation. Mhmm. That might impact having their voice heard. And so look, people are masking. They've got invisible disabilities. How do you know, how do you how do you build the conditions to make sure that you can maximize that as much as you can for us. It's really about trying to have the most strongest principles around how we do this sort of work. One of them for us is around being trauma informed. Yep. And that's a significant principle to how we approach all the work, and that can look like a range of different things. It can look like how we set up a space. It can look like our language. Mhmm. You know, and there's other things there around doing no harm being strengths based, and a range of other factors that we think about too. But it comes back to that process or or or I guess that that frame for co design being a fluid process and journey that we go on when we think about design, and that people will fit into many different spaces and places, but each voice is as significant as the other. Yeah. And so again, every project looks different. Mhmm. And we talk about getting into the river, but it's about bringing those principles to the forefront of that design journey. In, at UX Australia in 2011, I think it was, design researcher by the name of Lisa Harrison gave a talk on doing design research with sort of subcultures within Sydney. And the one that she spoke about in particular was a graffiti culture. And the way in which you approach a group who are engaged in an activity that sits, you know, gray area as far as the law is concerned and are often in places where they're not you know, supposed to be, and engaging in activities that they're not really supposed to be engaging in. But which is also a very legitimate subculture and an important cultural group to understand and engage with. And she spoke a lot about the need to gain trust, to establish confidence and credibility, and the ways in which that happened were often through trusted third parties or trusted gatekeepers into that community. So people who would vouch for you. So you talk about, you know, that relational aspect of it. You know, I'll talk to you because you were you know, such and such spoke to you and and they've vouched for you. I can imagine that when you approach community, there's quite a protocol in place around how you go about doing that. But there's probably sort of lessons there that can be more broadly applied to any group. Absolutely. The same rules apply for us as as aboriginal designers. Each community and country is different. There can be an assumption that we can walk into any aboriginal community and people will just roll out a red carpet. You know, like the same rules apply for us. People have to know who we are, where we're from. Someone vouches that, you know, he's proper. You can have a yard with him That's fine. You know, that sort of stuff is just as significant. And it's one of the biggest questions that we get when we talk about co design is people say, like, whether it's aboriginal communities or the broader community, people will say, like, how to we've only got x amount of time or x amount of space. Yeah. And you're talking about relationship building. Like, how do we do that? And and that's one way. Like, trying to identify people across the community that are connected, that you have a relationship with, that can bridge a gap. But the others as well is thinking about this sort of stuff as long term relationships and connections. Yep. So we we you know, again, I'm always I'm always gonna bring it back to aboriginal communities. But no matter where you are or where you're based, you know, or what your design sort of you know, area of expertise is or focus, It's about making sure that you're starting to think about what what is my own relationship with community look like? With communities look like across that spectrum of outside of my nine to five job? Yeah. You know? And so we really encourage like, you know, people come to us and they're gonna talk about like, well, how do I strengthen my relationship with Aboriginal community? It's like, well, what does that look like for you in terms of the community or country that you're on? You know, we ask people like, do you know the name of you know, there's all these people blowing up about walking to countries and and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, however anyone feels in that room doesn't really bother me. But my biggest thing I say to that is like, you know, do you know the name of the country that you're on right now? Yep. Do you know the name of the country that you're born on? Do you know what a country that you live and raise your family on? Like, our country is made up of like hundreds of different aboriginal nations and cultures here. And when we encourage professionals and practitioners to start to understand that they they actually have their own inherent connection to aboriginal country that might look very different across the spectrum of people in this room. And that's beautiful. Yeah. You know? Aboriginal people have custodianship of country. But every single person in this room has a connection to country. Country that is very unique to them and their lived experience and their family's journey and lived experience. And they should be proud and celebrated in sort of diverse or negative thing. It's about it's about collective, you know, strength. And pride as a nation, you know. I'm digressing a bit because I get passionate about No such thing. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm coming from a strengths based perspective. Hopefully, you're taking that out for anyone who's, on the other side. But yeah. So like that's that's what we encourage. We encourage people think about their their own design journey if they're thinking about social and human and community based policy and and projects. Outside of how they exist as design practitioners in the nine to five world. Yeah. And that sort of stuff hopefully will flow into how they build better relational and how they can connect more broadly with their own communities. Hopefully, ideally as well. So I know, like, one of the things for me has been a recognition that you know, historically, I would rely on an appeal to authority to a the you should talk to me because I'm here on behalf of the government. Sort of thing or I'm here on behalf of a corporation that you have a service with or, you know, like it's it's that type of that's the way to establish credibility. I think it's, your point around institutions and you know, degrees or, you know, like awards and and that kind of thing. Is that same sort of thing. But it's it's the attitude of a person who's never been let down by institutions. Yeah. It's a person who's supported and protected by those institutes. Rather than someone who finds themselves too often on the wrong side of authority. And the wrong side of the system. Mhmm. And so I might I might feel comfortable trusting in authority and trusting in the government trusting in the police force and the rest of it. But there are well and truly groups out there that would not respond in the same way and have every reason not to. Absolutely. And I've got to take a different attitude into those communities. Absolutely. I just have to. Absolutely. And I think that comes back to traditionally research, design, from a social perspective in our communities but across across a spectrum of sort of, you know, justice, health, and and different spaces and places, communities have been let down and have been harmed. You know? And so there is this there is this challenge that designers can come in and we can experience as well that friction when we come in to try and design together and go on a journey with community about the real pressure on our own shoulders. To be like, fuck. I wanna let this community down again because it's already been a mission to get them to the table, and they've already talked to us about oh, we had this researcher come out and do this project, and they said all this great stuff, we've never seen them again. So I saw it's gonna be with you, bud, you know. And you said to me, going, fuck, it's gonna be a journey. You know, like, but that's the reality. Yeah. Because these practices have been harmful in many different ways to our communities. You know, research was a tool of colonization. Yes. You know, it was used as surveillance. It was used to gather information and data, not for our community's benefits. You know, luckily language from this country and place still exists today because of that surveillance. But recent we're the most over researched people on the planet. It's been harmful in many different ways. And so when we come in we talk about research projects with community. It's not met it's not, we're not met with open arms. Right. And so co but co design actually is a really valuable practice for us to start to actually give that power back to our community. And it's a new conversation because our communities aren't used to having agency and decision making in these processes and journeys. So when I talk about that method design around measuring what success looks like in the prison project Yeah. That's an example. You know, we we delivered a project recently around domestic and family violence. And we designed that research project with survivors of domestic and family violence and practitioners in the sector And they informed how that research project should happen. And how that looked at the end was very different to what Department of Communities and Justice had commissioned us for. And that was a friction. Yeah. Like, as a as a as a, they were our client. And they weren't happy with us because we had to vary our contract three times because it blew out of time. And community wanted what was called a braided methodology. Okay. They wanted academic they wanted they wanted academic evidence. They wanted, community case studies, around community organizations of what's working on the ground. And they want to stories of lived experience. And we got there as a result of giving our people agency in terms of determining what that research design looked like. Yep. But it's it's not it's it's not an easy journey. Not for a fan artist. Not good for business either, but that's enough conversation. The, a few years ago, I went on a charity bike ride up the West Coast Of Australia. And as part of that we've stopped in the community of Robyn which is up in the Northwest part of Western Australia. And it was like two weeks before we arrived. And there was about 50 of us. We were raising money for the Black Dog Institute, to help fund research into mental health and and the role of exercise in, helping with mental ill health But two weeks prior, that community had been all over the news due to stories of domestic violence and family and domestic violence. And so we arrived in this town, and and into this community with this sort of you know, cloud hanging over them. And we were we were welcomed in. And we were welcomed in as people who were genuinely interested in listening. So and they spoke about how like when we, you know, we we rode into town quite literally But we we we rode, we cycled into town and we arrived and they had this thing set up for us. But the they were happy that we spent most of our time listening. We weren't, we weren't trying to tell them things, we weren't trying to solve problems for them, we weren't, you know, like a whole bunch of stuff. We were there to listen, we were there to understand I was fortunate enough on that, trip to be with Adam Goods. Mhmm. He went out and visited the prison that was nearby, spoke to, the men who were there and it was men that he went and visited. There was a very short discussion where some of the other cyclists were like, oh, we'd love to come as well. Yeah. And Adam shut them down and just went, no, that's not gonna happen. That's not Yeah. This isn't a show. This is you know. But it was interesting just the way in which the way in which the community was really concerned about what stories we would take away and how we would represent them and their stories. And so there was a like, some tension there around the elders wanted to speak. And particularly the female, the women elders wanted to wanted to speak. They wanted their stories shared, and there was some hesitation from other parts of the community around, well, what would we do with those stories? And again, like actually establishing any kind of trust from them Mhmm. Had occurred much before our visit. It was the only reason we were allowed in there especially when it hit the news a couple of weeks prior. But a lot of work had gone into establishing that before we arrived. But it was the only reason why they really spoke to me. The story based stuff is actually it's it's a lot of power that we have as designers when we go into communities is the stories that we take away. Yeah. You know, we're we're as as a society we're battling this rhetoric across communities around how we talk about, you know, kids kids in custody for all kids in custody. Mhmm. But, you know, you you design a service for the kids in custody and you learn really quickly that much of those kids in prison have come from the most you know, experienced the most complex trauma Mhmm. Living with complex health health needs that aren't being addressed, you know, a range of factors Yeah. And and present as any other kid that you would see in a classroom that's just you know, living amongst these conditions. And the stories that we take away when we go on design journeys with communities are really, really important because they either become stories that do harm or do no harm, you know, and lift communities, you know, give communities a bit of agency back. You know, me media and representation is probably one of the most powerful tools in terms of you know, negatively impacting different parts of our communities as well. And so we have agency as designers. You know, we hear stories. We collect data. We interpret data. We decide what becomes a finding. Yeah. You know, we write a report. We present it back. But it's like we have power in terms of how we elevate those forces. Every step of that process. Every step. Mhmm. You know? And I think you talk about the stories that we take away you know, traditional design centers one person or one team. Yeah. In our communities, we think of design collectively.

## Slides

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### SOMETHING YOU CAN ACTION THIS WEEK
Add one invisible-disability question to your next screener, or run the three audit questions over a single screen

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### SOMETHING YOU CAN ACTION THIS WEEK
**LIVED EXPERIENCE IS EXPERTISE**

The person best placed to find these problems might already be on your team. Get them in the room and make the room worth being in.

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# SOMETHING YOU CAN ACTION THIS WEEK
## **LIVED EXPERIENCE IS EXPERTISE**

The person best placed to find these problems might already be on your team. Get them in the room and make the room worth being in.

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# LIVED EXPERIENCE IS EXPERTISE
## Something you can action this week

The person best placed to find these problems might already be on your team. Get them in the room and make the room worth being in.

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# JOSEPHINE ABBATTANGELO - THE MASKING TAX - UX AUSTRALIA 2026
[https://uxaustralia.com.au/2026](https://uxaustralia.com.au/2026)

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[https://aka.ms/msft-ai-summit-2023](https://aka.ms/msft-ai-summit-2023)
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