Zeerak Ahmed

Senior UX Design Lead, Amazon

Zeerak Ahmed is a designer, engineer and writer from Lahore, Pakistan. He is a Senior UX Design Lead at Amazon, designs breakthrough Urdu technology under Matnsaz, and writes about Pakistani pop music.

Zeerak has worked for Microsoft and on educational games and healthcare technology. He holds a Master’s in Design Engineering with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He also holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Engineering, Magna Cum Laude, in Computer Science and Public Policy from Princeton University. Zeerak was part of a laptop orchestra and has taught design and computer science.

Building Better Software for the Underserved

Main Stage

Track 4

Thurs - Sept. 23

1:30 am EDT

Modern technology does not deliver uniformly for people across the world. Economic, political and technological path dependence has encoded bias and lazy thinking into our software and design methodology. Without a systematic change in how we approach our work, we risk erasing cultural practice and further widening the digital divide. This talk explores techniques on improving the design practice for underserved technological audiences.