On 24 February the Assisted Digital team hosted a Tradeshow at the National Library in Wellington. As outlined in our blog post — Assisted Digital: bringing it all together — the purpose was to:
- connect with others working on related initiatives
- share ideas and learning on helping customers to use, shift to and stay in digital channels
- better coordinate our efforts.
We had a great turnout on the day with over 100 people attending from across government agencies, community organisations and the private sector. Some interested members of the public passing by also joined us to see what all the fuss was about!
Stalls from a range of organisations working in areas relating to assisted digital covered topics from customer experience and service design, to evidence and research:
- 2020 Trust
- Govt.nz
- Access 1in5
- Deaf Aotearoa
- TalkLink
- National Foundation for the Deaf
- SeniorNet
- The Blind Foundation
- High Tech Youth
- Pathways Awarua
- ANZ
- Inland Revenue.
Speakers shared their experience with helping customers shift to digital, research insights into access, literacy and customer behaviours online, and posed questions for how government could think differently.
Video transcript
0:00 — Music playing. Text displayed: Result 10, New Zealand Government, Assisted Digital Tradeshow, 24th February 2014, Wellington. Quote displayed: "Assisting customers to transact digitally and providing alternatives for those who can't." —Result 10 Blueprint, 2014
0:05 — People walking into the Assisted Digital Tradeshow. People having conversations and walking around the space.
0:08 — People interacting with stall holders.
0:10 — Text displayed: "Sharing ways to help customers use, shift and stay in digital channels".
0:18 — People sitting at computers interacting with a stall.
0:20 — People interacting with stalls, talking.
0:24 — Speaker presenting, scan of audience.
0:28 — Speaker at lectern with presentation on screen in the background. Text displayed: "Insights from private, public and community sectors on what works and what doesn't".
0:30 — Member of audience takes a photo on their phone.
0:32 — Speaker presenting. Screen in background identifies her as Annika Naschitzki on 'Redesigning Govt.nz'.
0:34 — Member of audience taking notes on their phone.
0:37 — Two speakers presenting. Screen identifies Victoria University of Wellington.
0:40 — Attendees engage with stalls.
0:55 — Text displayed: "Continue the conversation. Stay connected so we can work better together”.
Learnings from the private sector
ANZ shared their experience of helping customers go digital. Building staff capability so people are comfortable with the technology and are confident using apps themselves, has been a successful way to support customers. Showing customers how to use the goMoney app on their phone while they’re in a branch, for example, has proved much more effective for uptake than just telling customers about it.
On top of this show-and-tell view, they shared some other pearls of wisdom:
- avoid assumptions about your customers
- commit to customer education as everyone’s responsibility
- track and measure your progress
- have fun with the process of going digital.
Designing for low literacy
Govt.nz shared their research insights into low literacy, as part of the process of redesigning the Govt.nz website. They found that 40% of New Zealand’s working population have lower literacy skills, and looked at what this means for online behaviours. They also shared how they’ve started to incorporate this in their website redesign.
The Govt.nz learnings and redesign journey is shared in detail in the Web Toolkit blog posts: Part I: Literacy and government websites – to the data! and Part II: Literacy and government websites – to the data!
Where Inland Revenue is heading with digital
Inland Revenue (IR) shared their general direction of travel with digital services: focusing on what digital can bring to customers, rather than digital being the goal. They’re looking at better linking systems across government and private sector to fit tax more seamlessly into people’s lives, and making better use of information to improve customer outcomes.
Research insights and food for thought — online behaviours
Victoria University shared their recent research: Kiwis Managing their Online Identity Information. The research focused on building a deeper understanding of the identity information behaviours of New Zealanders — in online commercial transactions, online transactions with government, and on social networking sites. It also looked at people’s actual experiences with cybercrime or cyber-enabled crime.
2020 Trust shared their research around digital literacy, and the outcomes of their work in Computers in Homes and SteppingUP programmes. This included the most common activities of families online, the government websites they’re accessing and using, and how the internet is being used to connect with others — e.g. communication with whānau. It also looked at where people access the internet outside their homes.
A speaker from the Digital Transformation Team raised some questions for government to think differently about how we access our information digitally, and how this might need to be more fit-for-purpose in the future — different for different people. She gave the analogy of when we physically stored important documents in our houses, and choosing the lock we thought best fitted the level of security and access we needed to this information. What could this look like in a digital environment?
What next?
We collected feedback from attendees on the day and after the event. Most respondents told us the tradeshow was valuable for them and agreed the event gave them ideas for their work. We also learned some things we can improve on.
