Closing the digital divide by design

Recently I had a conversation with my mother, who is in her mid-80s. She told me an experience of hers that was a very timely reminder to me that services and products have to be designed for all users.

Mom loves her iPad and has an Alexa device (in fact, we usually have video calls over the Alexa — she seems to find this easier to understand than FaceTime). She’s more digitally aware than some of her generational peers. But technology is still sometimes baffling or intimidating to her. In addition, she is hearing impaired and because of macular degeneration, has some sight impairment.

Checking in or checked out?

Now widowed, and fiercely, stubbornly independent, she’s not one to ask for help if she thinks she can do it herself. So when she needed to go to Urgent Care for a painful cyst, she simply drove herself there. (She is safe to drive in daylight.) The check-in at Urgent Care was via a touchscreen where she had to input lots of details — name, address, date of birth, etc. She thought she’d completed it, and she sat down to wait.

Two hours later, she was still waiting. She noticed that people who came in after her were being seen. When she went up to the desk to ask why she hadn’t been seen yet, it turns out that somehow she hadn’t submitted her details on the check-in screen. She wasn’t even in the queue.

The receptionist checked her in but said it could be a 4-hour wait at this point — which would take her into after-dark hours, when it wouldn’t be safe for her to drive. She went home without seeing a clinician.

She got the human-centred approach she needed when she realised her mistake, but it was too late to be useful to her.

A service failure

Could the Urgent Care Center have made the alternative of checking in with a receptionist clearer? Or was she funnelled straight to the touchscreen without being given a clear option? I suspect the latter.

Or maybe she was just trying to do the ‘right thing’ and not be a bother to the receptionist — something that older patients tend to be very conscious of, in my experience. Either way, it was a failure by the service.

Nobody left behind, even on a ‘digital first’ project

Having a touchscreen check-in makes sense...to some user groups. It cuts down on admin for the front-desk staff. It saves having to wait to speak to someone. It’s a paper-free way to capture all the patient’s details and health issue, and puts them in a queue so they can be seen in the right order.

But for those users who aren’t used to touchscreen technology? Who have learning disabilities like dyslexia? Who have impairments to their sight? Who have dexterity or mobility problems that make a touchscreen physically difficult? As my mother’s experience illustrates, it’s not the right pathway for every patient. It’s one way, but it can’t be the only way.

Many of the projects I work on are in the healthcare sector. I look at ways of delivering a health service digitally. There is of course a lot of talk around ‘digital first’ and ‘mobile first’. And having this pathway has lots of advantages for providers and users. It saves waiting for a GP appointment, waiting on the phone or taking time off work for routine checks or tasks. It’s great for lots of patients and it certainly helps the GP practice manage its patient load.

The growing digital divide

As a content designer and UX professional, though, my job is to consider all the pathways and all the users. I have to think about users who:

• Have physical, sensory or cognitive accessibility needs
• Use assistive technology like screenreaders or captions
• Do not have high digital confidence
• Do not have access at home to technology like tablets, laptops or smartphones
• Do not have wifi at home, either because of local infrastructure or for economic reasons

Ten million people in the UK lack basic foundational digital skills, and 6.9 million will remain digitally excluded if nothing is done to help them. This can lead directly to poverty risk and poorer health outcomes. And digital exclusion disproportionately affects people who are already at a disadvantage, for example through age, poverty or disability. (Good Things Foundation)

How UX and content design can bridge the gap

So how can we as creators of digital services make sure that we’re not contributing to the digital divide?

Technology can be a wonderful thing, making lives easier and more convenient, and giving faster, clearer access to services. But content designers, UX designers and product owners need to take a 360-degree view to make sure that no user is left behind.

For example:

• Informing users clearly of alternative pathways such as a telephone line or face-to-face. Services and businesses may bury this, to save time and money, but such a practice is exclusionary and deceptive
• Making pages lightweight by avoiding unnecessary text or images
• Reassuring users about the security of your service and being transparent about privacy and data. Those wary of or inexperienced with technology will quite rightly be fearful of scams, so it’s up to you to build trust
• Keeping the accessibility needs of users front of mind, by ensuring that designs and content are WCAG-compliant and in simple, clear language
• Carrying out user research with a diverse panel — not only those with accessibility needs but also those with lower digital literacy or confidence

Any design needs to consider marginalised users as part of a baked-in approach — not as an afterthought.

I can’t avoid mentioning it: Artificial Intelligence (AI)

This touches on the currently raging debates around AI too. There is much discussion nowadays about the benefits or risks of applying it to services and content.

AI can be great for taking care of tasks like generating metadata or error messages, or for a run at some tricky content that a UX writer is getting stuck on.

But take the human out of the equation, and you run the risk of alienating your users and preventing them from using your service. You might end up with a service that is clunky, unintuitive and full of complicated language that isn’t in your user’s vocabulary.

Human-centred first

As technology develops and evolves, one thing remains the constant: the humans at the centre. It’s up to us to make sure they don’t get left behind.

P.S. For those concerned about Mom, she’s fine. Her training as a nurse kicked in and she took care of herself with a compress and bandages.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash