Lloyds ‘Consumer Digital Index’ Event

An annual event put on by Lloyds Banking Group this morning, following publication of their 2022 UK Consumer Digital Index report, which they describe as “The UK’s largest study of digital and financial lives and the Essential Digital Skills measure”. Data was collected by Ipsos using phone interviews with 4,099 adults selected to be representative of the UK population, with questions focusing on whether participants were able to independently complete a range of ‘Essential Digital Skills’ to help establish a measure of competency.

Possibly the most pertinent session from the project’s perspective was that made up of a panel of inspirational community groups who had some interesting insights relating to digital engagement to offer, such as:

• The notion of ‘compromised’ internet access mentioned by The bread and butter thing, who highlighted that describing people as simply having access does not always distinguish those people who solely access the internet via their phones (and who therefore struggle interacting with key online services such as the NHS, banking or governmental sites);
• The approach taken by the Hyde Housing Association, who tailor responses to the individual seeking help or advice; the example given was of their telephony service, where a user’s telephone number can identify them as someone who needs to be put straight through to speak to a human, for example if hard of hearing or visually-impaired);
• When asked by BT how they could engage with hard-to-reach sectors, the response from Get Families Talking stressed the importance of organising co-design sessions, with all three groups making the same simple recommendation: to reach people, you need to turn up at their communities and speak to them.

Relevant links posted in Teams chat:

• NHS blog post: Narrowing the gap – increasing engagement with digital services (published 11 October 22)
• Good Things Foundation