Why listening to people who are struggling helps you build services that work better for everyone.
Lots of things can make a person vulnerable, from living with a disability or illness to coping with a life event like losing a job or a partner.
A person can become vulnerable without warning, and what made them vulnerable might come or go, or leave its mark forever.
That’s why, at any time, 49% of UK adults show characteristics of vulnerability, according to the Financial Conduct Authority.
When life is hard, processing information is harder
Being vulnerable changes how much information we can take in, and how we process that information. This is important for those of us who design services and communications that deal with money. Financial information can be difficult to follow even when you’re fit and happy. Now imagine you’re preoccupied by a hospital appointment, scared of the next gas bill or worried your memory is fading.
Start with the person, not the process
No one should have to wade through background information or explanatory text. We need to give people the most important facts and tell them what they need to do.
The law supports this. Both the Equality Act 2010 and The Pensions Regulator’s General Code both require services and content to be accessible.
Technical standards are the baseline. Guidelines like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and Accessible Numbers should inform everything you make. But these are rules of thumb. Meeting a standard is not the same as meeting a real person.
Design with people, not just for them
The people who use your service will always teach you more than guesswork or assumptions. So ask them and test your ideas with them. Do this early and often throughout a project.
Lucia Bertello from Three Hands Insight showed us how this works at a recent Wednesday Wisdom webinar. Three Hands works with ‘lived experts’ – people with direct experience of the situation you are designing for.
Lucia shared Three Hands’ work with Quilter, a UK wealth management firm. Quilter wanted to improve its support for people who need to report the death of a loved one. Three Hands brought Quilter’s team together with people who had lost a partner or a relative. These lived experts helped Quilter’s team see and feel how the standard list of documents could confuse and frighten someone in their situation.
In response, Quilter has launched a new online service for reporting a death, dropping some outdated rules around documents and signatures. Customers who are grieving are now assigned a named member of Quilter’s support team and have access to specialist ‘bereavement first aiders’. The result is a service that’s kinder, simpler and more accessible.
Better for some means better for everyone
When you make a service better for people who are vulnerable, you usually make it better for everyone.
Financial communications rarely land in ‘perfect’ conditions. Most people are busy, worn out and juggling priorities. Real life means scanning a letter at 10pm with one eye on the TV. So everyone, no matter what they’re going through, appreciates a shorter form, simpler words and a process with fewer steps.
As communicators, our responsibility is to make financial information easy to use. Designing and testing with vulnerability in mind just gets you there faster, and helps you take everyone with you.
You can watch the full session with Lucia if you’d like to hear more.
