Working with older adults to better understand alcohol risks
How we built our new over 50s alcohol health check tool.
Understanding alcohol’s impact on your health isn’t easy — and it gets harder as you get older.
Drink Wise, Age Well was a lottery-funded programme that aimed to provide support, challenge stigma and raise awareness of alcohol issues in over 50s. It worked in 5 regions across the UK through direct interventions, advocacy and awareness campaigns.
But with the programme coming to an end this year, we wanted to build a digital legacy: preserving its valuable insights and learnings, and exploring ways to support even more people through digital tools.
Today, I want to share one part of this work: our Over 50s Alcohol Health Check tool.
The idea behind this is simple: answer a few questions about your drinking, then see information about your risk and advice for changing your drinking habits.
While there are a few similar tools out there, none of them are designed for the specific needs of over 50s.
And so naturally, we began by finding out a bit more about those needs.
Learning about our users
At its heart, the Drink Wise, Age Well programme involved engaging, motivating conversations between staff and the people they support. As a digital team, the big challenge was to translate this for an online audience.
We know that we can’t simply replicate a conversation with an experienced alcohol worker.
But through speaking to frontline Drink Wise, Age Well staff, we learned about what concerns people, what engages and motivates them — and the kind of advice that’s best for their needs.
For example, we learned that people often don’t understand the interactions between alcohol and medications, or that it takes longer for your body to process alcohol as you age.
Conversely, we also heard that people in this demographic are really motivated by the idea of protecting their health — and some of the ways staff connect that to alcohol.
We were beginning to understand how we could make our advice useful, engaging and specific to the needs of over 50s who drink — and so we set about building version 1.
Getting started
In the first version of our tool, people answer the questions, then see a results page for one of four risk categories:
- Low risk
- Increasing risk
- Higher Risk
- Possible dependence
We knew we had to be careful with ‘possibly dependent’ users. For those users, we show a strong warning about the risks of withdrawal and advise them to seek help from a medical professional.
But people in the other categories see information about their level of risk, plus snippets of advice tailored to their answers.
So if someone has sleep problems, for example, we show them some brief information about how alcohol affects sleep.
We were pleased with our first version. But we knew it wasn’t perfect — so it was time to test it with real people.
Testing and learning
Testing and improvement is a massive part of what we do.
It’s how we make sure that what we’re building meets the needs of our users — especially when the feedback challenges our assumptions.
In that spirit, we shared in-progress versions of the tool with frontline alcohol workers and potential users. We learned that:
Our results page was too wordy
We were trying to fit a lot of advice and information in — and we found that users often weren’t reading the whole page.
We responded by showing certain snippets of advice ‘in context’ as people answered the questions, rather than leaving it all until the last page. This means that if someone tells us they have sleep problems, they see relevant advice straight away.
Hearing about alcohol risk can be alarming
We want to motivate people — not frighten them. Frontline staff told us that many people are anxious when they find out about their risk.
We responded by including a really clear link to our webchat service, encouraging people to talk to one of our trained advisors if they’re concerned by their results.
People didn’t have a clear ‘next step’ in mind
We don’t just want to offer advice: we want to help people take action. But when we asked what people would do next after seeing their results, they often said they didn’t know.
We responded by simplifying the layout. Before, people would see three different suggestions for ways to cut down their drinking. Now, they only see one suggestion at a time — but can click through to see another if they want.
What next?
We’re really pleased to have launched the tool in time for Alcohol Awareness Week 2020. It’s currently live on the We Are With You website.
But our design process doesn’t end when the tool goes live. In the coming weeks we’ll continue to gather feedback, test it with more people and build on their insights to make it better.
In the bigger picture, we know the last year has been really difficult. Lots of people have struggled to find support — whatever their age.
We think digital can play a big part in making things better. We’ll keep exploring the possibilities, so we can continue to reach and help more people — whatever happens in the offline world.
These are tough times for everyone. Our services are open and we’re here to work alongside you during this difficult time. Visit our website for information and advice, to chat to a trained advisor or to find your local service.
