5 things to know before you try to sell digital to older people

Key findings from our design sprint on communicating the benefits of digital to older people

In October, we facilitated a 2 day design sprint for our project with the Centre for Ageing Better to understand, prototype and test ideas for engaging older people in using digital technology.

I’ve written more about the process of running a design sprint in a separate post and Anna has written about how we’ll be using the insight to inform our comms strategy.

Rapid prototyping and user research on the streets of Sheffield

But here are the top 5 insights from the 2 days.

1. Some older people really are ‘not interested’ and they’re proud of that.
   We cannot and should not expect to win everyone over with the argument that they should be online. It’s really difficult to reach resistant people and our Online Centres are doing a great job at breaking down the barriers at a local level. Our communications should encourage but not make people feel they have to get online — this will only reinforce resistance.
2. The perceived risks of being online are not stopping older people from using the internet but are limiting their use.
   Focussing comms messages on the risks of being online (eg. identity theft, online bullying, fake news) was seen as a positive way to engage older people rather than using more positive messages that don’t explain the risk.
3. Targeting family as influencers can help to encourage older people to try using digital, however, family are not the right people to spend time showing older people how to use digital.
   Targeting family to help them signpost their older relatives to support outside the family would be much more effective than expecting family members to have the time and patience to help them directly.
4. Older people who are online have often done it out of necessity rather than choice.
   Big life changes can create the need for older people to get online. Accessing health and social support or managing household finances often require you to engage online. This can be a time of crisis (as we also found in our Longitudinal Learner Survey) where having to use digital for the first time is another thing to worry about. Communicating the value of digital and the support our centres can offer at this point would help reduce this worry.
5. Older people who are retired and who used the digital in their jobs don’t translate the value to their personal lives.
   There are older people who have digital skills from their jobs but don’t see why they need to use them in their personal lives. Identifying how these skills are transferable to enriching their lives in retirement could encourage older people to get online at home.

We’ll continue to test ideas and learn more about the most effective ways to communicate with and engage older people and share our findings as we go.

If you’d like to learn more about taking a design sprint approach to research or working to understand the barriers to engaging older people with digital, get in touch — tim@goodthingsfoundation.org.