"IF understood how to deliver effective and efficient services, that also benefit vulnerable consumers. The team used practical examples to help us understand the opportunities emerging technologies offer for transforming the way our services operate in the future."

[.quote-author]Director of Customer Journey[.quote-author]

Problem

Our client wanted to understand how to automate advice workflows, to increase capacity and drive down costs, without compromising their ethical standards. They knew that services that result in extractive, tiered or unfair experiences would simply not be ok.

Our job was to help the charity grow the capabilities for trustworthy use of technology and automation. At the time this was an approach that was fairly rare among charities. Ultimately we needed to demonstrate how digital advice could help them deliver services that were more resilient, adaptable, and accessible.
Alongside this, our client wanted use cases and examples to make the investment case for a Lab, a new part of the organisation that would research, prototype, launch and scale innovative propositions. Our work was also to inform their methodologies, and help leadership understand how that change could be embedded longer term across the organisation.

This was a series of projects completed over a one year period. We ran projects in a variety of policy areas including energy, welfare, debt and financial planning and immigration advice.

“IF helped us to visualise how our services could be different. It helped us think big. It was one of those rare pieces of work that captured people's imaginations so that people kept referring back to it, even many months later.”

[.quote-author]Director of Policy and Advocacy[.quote-author]

Our approach

Design research

We started understanding the context through site visits and design research. We created prompts, and eventually prototypes, to use within user research lab sessions to understand people's responses and ideas towards the use of automation within services. This gave us the insights we needed to develop more refined prototypes but also recommendations to the client. Members from our client team often joined our user research sessions, to help the team build muscles in consentful research practices. Throughout the research we were bringing to life people’s stories, helping the team hear how care, or a lack of care, transformed their ability to confront and solve their own problems.

"You very quickly got to grips with things that took the whole sector a few years to work out, and arrived at novel insights."

[.quote-author]Head of Money Advice[.quote-author]

Full stack design and development

We quickly connected our design research work into the proposed technical architecture alongside the needs of the policy team. From these ideas we developed higher fidelity prototypes that could help us tell a story to leadership teams internally.

Capabilities for trust

We worked in close collaboration with our clients teams, including running codesign sessions and workshops to embed knowledge within the team. We were showing how user research, design, agile working and solving problems in experimental ways could help set the Lab team up for success. At the same time we were showing how to embed care into the technology, by creating strategic stories that landed in the hearts and minds of teams.

“IF showed where automation could support specialists to have more time to spend on what they do best, and how this could be done in ways that are transparent and accountable. The team brought a deep understanding of how to show care through services that respect people’s emotional needs.”

[.quote-author]Head of Lab[.quote-author]

Outcomes

The outcomes of this work remain confidential, however we can share that the Lab continues to run today using and growing the capabilities for trust that we helped to start. The belief that care and trust should be embedded within the product development process continues.

In 2023 digital advice helped to serve 1/5 of all requests for advice to the charity.