Struggling in a self-serve world
How charities can use content design and data to support their users
By Jo Macauley
Scroll content designer Jo Macauley is passionate about the power of data and evidence to transform the way charities communicate with the people they support.
Knowledge is power
So why is it so hard for so many of us to thrive, even with all the information under the sun at our fingertips?
Having access to the information you need to live your life and take part in society is a basic need. And yet in 2022, it can be harder than ever for the average adult in the UK to feel truly confident and sure-footed in their choices amid the pressures of the society they’re making them in.
This gap —between our rights and responsibilities and what we need to know to meet them— is not for the lack of information: the majority of us have access to the largest information resource in history, and we’re getting better every day at using it to help run our lives.
Water everywhere, but not a drop to drink
The problem is the archaic systems and processes we all encounter when deciding where to live, how to travel, and how to keep our families fed, educated and healthy. Those systems and processes are often far older than the media we use today to access them, and written using language that seems designed to keep us outside the realm of knowledge, rather than welcoming us in. There’s so much information out there, but it’s bound up in bureaucracy that’s too costly and difficult to untie.
The effects of being uninformed, overwhelmed and worried can be exhausting, and too many years of stress will likely cause damage to our health.
Seeking clarity in a sea of information
It’s in this uncertain space that charities and social enterprises often find us; lost and desperate to make sense of the things we know we need, like what benefits and tax reliefs we might be entitled to, or how to find somewhere safe and affordable to live.
Third sector bodies are being called on more than ever to fill the gap between what the public needs and what the state is ill-equipped to give us, and this doesn’t just mean financial support and civic services: it’s about information, guidance and clarity, too.
It’s about understanding what will happen when you go to your doctor with a sinister lump under your arm that you’ve kept to yourself out of fear. Learning about how you’ll be examined, diagnosed, and if necessary, treated. These are all vital steps to promoting early detection of a life-threatening disease. It’s about knowing that the content you’re reading is accurate, reliable and approved by experts, using language that you can understand.
The correct information delivered in the most thoughtful way won’t take away that lump, but it could leave you feeling reassured enough to pick up the phone to make that doctor’s appointment. At its best, that web page you just landed on might make you feel less scared and alone.
Well-written content saves lives
Macmillan Cancer Support has deployed a powerful tool to cut through the thickets of misinformation that pervade the digital landscape. Their digital leaders knew that the messages they deliver and the users who rely on them required more than the skill of a good copywriter: they needed content design.
Content designers would work to identify exactly what their users needed to know about every kind of cancer, based on data, research and the outcomes of user testing. They would know how to take the language of doctors and scientists and turn it into something that everyone, no matter their age, background or technical ability, could understand and use with confidence. They had the training to take a subject matter so complex and often terrifying that many are afraid to discuss it, and approach it with honesty, openness and just the right amount of empathy – no cloying platitudes here, thanks.
What Macmillan have achieved with their web content is testament to not only the skill of the team of content designers, but to the bold and visionary decisions made by leaders who recognised early on that information can only save lives if they actively help their users understand it.
Content design is powerful: in the right hands, it’s transformative
It’s not just in times of illness and that we turn to the internet as a first line of support. Twelve years of Government austerity and cuts to social care services have stripped away vital sources of information and guidance for some of the country’s most vulnerable people, and there are many now who are being required to self-serve where they might once have had human support.
Charity leaders are facing enormous challenges in 2022. Fundraising targets creep ever higher as service users cling on to a social safety net that has been cynically worn down to its threads by budget cut after budget cut. But charities are nothing if not resourceful: these organisations know their audiences. They know their donors, their supporters, their service users. And this deep knowledge puts them one step ahead of many for-profit organisations — all they have to do with that knowledge is turn it into data and use it wisely.
Use the data you already have to get value from your content
If you work for a charity that focuses its work on supporting people through times of crisis; if your work exists to support people facing sickness, poverty, homelessness, unemployment or litigation, there is so much you can do with the resources you already have. All you have to do is look at things from a new angle – from that of your user.
The skills that constitute content design need to be learned, but once implemented they can bring positive change not just to your website, but to the sustainability of your whole organisation. These could include:
cutting the time people have to spend on the phone, waiting for a human to explain something your website could have done a better —and cheaper— job at explaining. This also frees up your staff to do other, more useful, tasks.
using your data ethically to learn more about who needs to know what, and why (and then make a pretty educated guess about what they’ll need to know next)
losing the abbreviations, the jargon and, at the very least, explaining the legalese in your website content
resisting the urge to over-write about complicated things, because we know that people simply don’t have the time and energy to read them
investing in well-designed content with a strong governance framework in place so that your content remains accurate, relevant and up to date even when your staff move on
making it all make sense, so that more people have a chance of understanding it
Content design will help remove the barriers to your information
Bringing content design into your online communications will help you to make conscious choices about how you talk about the heavy things. The complicated, overwhelming things. The things that hold your users back and keep them down. With content design, you can infuse your content with clarity and purpose, and put the power firmly back into the hands of your users.
We can’t change government policy or scrap the outdated systems overnight; things take time. And we‘ll probably never be entirely free of all those ‘temporary’ administration workarounds and fractured public services, because few leaders are brave enough to tear the systems down and start again.
But we can lead from the front and change what we can, to help where we can. We can start by removing the barriers to information and promoting better access to health, security and independence, for the good of everyone.
Scroll for good
Read how Scroll helped to transform content at Barnardo’s.