Why user-centricity is vital for charities

If user-centricity is all about putting supporters and beneficiaries at the heart of an organisation’s work, surely charities do this better than other sectors. After all, most charities are in constant contact with the people in their community.

 

Michael Wilkinson, Associate Director for Digital & Innovation at RNID, said, “We all have good intentions about wanting to help, but far too often we make a lot of assumptions about users. It’s natural, We’re humans. Humans make assumptions day in and day out about every aspect of their lives.

 

“It’s only by becoming user-centric that you can properly understand people’s behaviours and needs and therefore be more likely to design services and products that are actually going to change people’s lives or have an impact.”

 

Jon Faulkner, CEO at 6bythree, gives the example of designing websites. A charity or non-profit could know their web audiences very well, but still not be able to solve a particular problem or even identify whether it is a problem or not.

 

When Faulkner and colleagues worked on the Imperial College London website there were several pages with long dwell times – upwards of three minutes. Without speaking to users, no one could determine whether the time spent on these pages was because the information was useful and being read or because the users couldn’t find what they were looking for. 

 

Andy Wilkins, CEO and Co-Founder of Futr.ai, adds that rather than looking to serve those who are most represented in our communities, we should design services accessible to all. That means speaking to a broader range of users to understand experiences.

 

Wilkins explains: “We’ve got these services in our lives that we want to access, and we should be able to access. Why are we discriminated against by what language we speak, or what time of day we can access a service or whether we are proficient on a computer? Or have access to a telephone or a phone line?”

 

The unseen cost of choosing not to be user-centred could be significant. At Bath and North East Somerset Carers Centre, Deputy CEO, Janine Woodward-Grant was taken aback when she observed interviews with people who hadn’t heard of the charity but were potential supporters.

 

Four of the six people interviewed said that they would be unlikely to support the charity because the logo made it seem like it was part of the local council. The logo included the words, ‘Bath and North East Somerset’ to show that it served the local community and has since been changed.

 

It’s not always thought of in this way but taking a user-centred approach can help to build efficiency and risk management into everything you do. Understanding your community’s needs and behaviours increases the likelihood of solving them more quickly and more cost-effectively.

 

 

User-centred design in six steps

 

Faulker and his colleagues at 6bythree have developed a six-step process to user-centred design which can be used in any project.

 

Strategic capabilities: Audit how capable the organisation is of solving the problem – do you have the right skills and resources?

 

Design capabilities (co-design): Run a co-design process. Work with users to design a solution or solutions to the problem.

 

user-centricity: Work with a small, representative group of users from your community to test prototypes of your solution.

 

Implementation and launch: Launch the successful prototype and continue to seek feedback from users.

 

Digital marketing: Seek user feedback on the digital marketing approaches you plan to use to promote the solution.

 

Sustainability: Plan for the sustainability of the solution. Think about how often it may need to be evaluated by users and evolved to meet their changing needs.

 

 

User-centred design in the charity sector

 

RNID: online hearing test

 

Over the last ten years, RNID has experienced well-documented financial difficulties and been forced to make bold decisions to safeguard its future.

 

At a critical point in early 2020 the charity decided to invest in user-centricity and commission research with 6,000 people split into three groups – BSL users, people with lived experience and the general public. RNID developed a new strategy under four pillars – health, inclusion, employment and research – based on what the people from the research told them.

 

A key outcome from the research was the decision to re-brand from Action on Hearing Loss back to RNID because the previous name had the highest level of trust among users, despite ten years as Action on Hearing Loss.

 

Their brand awareness grew rapidly and Associate Director for Digital & Innovation, Michael Wilkinson, describes the process as a, “brave decision, but ultimately the right one.”

 

One of the top user needs identified in RNID’s research was helping people who suspect they might have hearing loss. The charity found that it can take up to ten years for people who are worried about their hearing to do anything about it.

 

Working with their in-house experts, the team decided to develop a hearing check that people could take online using a pair of standard headphones to help identify hearing loss. The online test isn’t a replacement for a full audiology assessment, but a good indicator of whether the user might need to visit their GP for an audiology referral.

 

They developed a minimum viable product – a user design term for developing something that is good enough to launch and test with users. This is a critical part of a user-centred approach - continuing to evolve a basic product or service in collaboration with users to be certain that it meets their needs.

 

RNID were delighted with some of the early feedback and learned a lot about how to make the user experience better. Wilkinson remembers that one user from the friends and family of people with hearing loss group said, “my husband would never go to the doctor about this. It’d feel like he’s wasting their time and he’s been putting off for a long time. This would be so amazing because we can do this in the comfort of our own home.”

 

Since the online hearing check launched more than 65,000 people have completed the online hearing check and one in four people who take the test download a certificate to take to their GP.

 

The user-centred journey doesn’t end there either. Methods for capturing user insight are also built into the test itself. Users are asked to give a thumbs up or thumbs down about their experience and provide qualitative feedback. The satisfaction rating is 76% and the team is using feedback to continually improve the service.

 

Read more about RNID’s journey to becoming digital first and user-centric on their blog.

 

 

Carers Centre: Cafés for Carers

 

Deputy CEO, Bath and North East Somerset Carers Centre, Janine Woodward-Grant said, “Having learned more about what it means to be user-centred, I see the difference between just listening to carers and really putting them at the heart of what we’re doing. Which absolutely does mean having them on the board and it does mean having a group that we listen to, but it’s actually almost like a layer on top of that again, where we’re constantly trying to understand what their needs are we’re constantly trying to understand their feelings, and we’re constantly trying to understand the impact of every decision that we make.”

 

Woodward-Grant and colleagues used a user-centred approach to develop their cafés for carers. They knew that many carers experienced loneliness and decided to create meet ups in local cafes for carers to share their experiences.

 

They asked carers in their existing networks whether they would be interested in attending a café and many said they would. When they launched the café service, however, hardly anyone turned up or if they did, they attended once or twice but then stopped attending.

 

“Our previous approach when we haven’t had good attendance at an event, or something hasn’t been going well was to think, ‘clearly. we’re not marketing it well enough’ so we’re going to put out emails, do an article in our magazine, do social content about it rather than thinking, ‘Hmmm, is this meeting a user need? What is the actual problem here? It might not necessarily be that we haven’t promoted it well enough’.”

 

The team began modelling a user journey for the café target audience. Through questioning their assumptions and speaking with carers, they realised that the problem wasn’t with the cafés it was with understanding what it takes for a carer to get to a cafe:

• Feeling bold enough to attend an event where they didn’t know anyone
• Choosing to attend an event when they didn’t know what would happen after they walked through the door
• Leaving the person they care for
• Deciding to do something for themselves when they already feel guilty about taking time out from caring

Equipped with a better understanding of the problem, the team looked around for examples of best practice communication ahead of café meetups and developed one of their own.

 

As a result, they have had to extend their café service to meet demand and have even started to see some attendees get involved as volunteers too.

 

“user-centricity is not new in the private sector. It’s not even really new in the charity sector. There are lots of people doing it really well.” Woodward-Grant reflects and to any charities considering trialling a user-centred approach, “do it because it improves impacts and outcomes and at the end of the day, that’s what we’re here for.”

 

Read more about Bath and North East Somerset’s journey to user-centricity on Woodward-Grant’s blog.

 

 

Tips on becoming user-centred

 

 

Use the resources you already have

• If you have an advice line where you speak to your users regularly, add on a specific question related to a problem or project to gather user insight.
• Look for trends in the information people are searching for or accessing on your website.

Research doesn’t have to be extensive or big budget

• Woodward-Grant was amazed to learn that “you only really need to have in depth conversations with six people [in a particular user group] to understand their needs.”

Being user-centred never ends

• After you launch a product or service being user-centred means constantly looking for insight from users to keep improving. Launching something that is ‘good enough’ and seeking user input to develop it is more valuable than trying to launch a finished product.

Talk to people who don’t know your charity as well as those who do

• You can never know what you don’t know! There could be a barrier to people getting involved with your charity that you won’t become aware of until you talk to them.

“You can’t really do digital well unless you’re taking a user-centric approach.”

• For Wilkinson, user-centricity and digital transformation come hand in hand. As the sector digitises more rapidly, user-centricity must become embedded at the same pace

There are different ways to bring user-centred design skills into your organisation

• Train a small number of staff in user-centricity and support others internally to learn from them through sharing processes and results or shadowing.
• Include user-centred design experience in role descriptions for new recruits.
• Work with agencies and consultants trained in user insight and user-centred design.

Listening to your community is important, but it isn’t being user-centred. Including people with lived experience in your organisation as staff or trustees is important, but it isn’t being user-centred.

 

Being user-centred means placing users’ needs at the heart of everything you do. It means asking users what their needs are instead of assuming. It means sharing services, campaigns and other products that you are planning at the earliest possible stage so that your users can be involved with developing them.

 

It means thinking carefully about how every decision you make and every action you take will impact users. It means truly putting your community first.