Building together: Experian’s Support Hub as a case study in the value of co-production
Building Support Hub, Experian’s tell it once platform that allows disabled consumers to tell multiple firms about their support needs from one platform and then have their needs met the next time they deal with those firms, to its current pilot stage has been a really interesting exercise in co-production.
You might expect the involvement of the consumers whom the platform sets out to serve now that we are at the testing phase. You might even expect some consultation immediately prior to this stage. And/or some focus groups as the idea turned into a minimum viable project.
What has been so exciting about Support Hub is that it didn’t happen like that at all.
I am writing a much longer paper on Support Hub as a template for co-production, because it’s a topic that’s both important and hot right now inside and outside academia. And you can download my more detailed paper, A Problem Shared, written for an audience of interested consumers from the additional resources.
What I want to do here is outline the key methods of co-production involved in building Support Hub
- As a demonstration to other businesses of what can be done — and a provocation to do likewise;
- By means of showing consumers who have every reason to be wary of yet another seemingly good idea, after decades of being brought in at the last minute to make an organization look good.
I want to share information about several key disabled stakeholders. For each, I will explain very briefly
- When they were brought in.
- What they brought to the table
- Some of the concrete changes to Support Hub that would ot have been made without their involvement
- In some cases, wider changes within the stakeholder group of Support Hub as a result of their involvement
This is far from an exhaustive list. I will also be very brief and cautious in talking about my own involvement. I will be more expansive in the academic paper I am writing where I have space to explain the methodological issues around an author writing about their own influence.
Co-production
First, a couple of sentences about co-production. Co-production is the involvement of key stakeholders in actually building something in a truly integral way. It can take many forms, but all of those forms embody two principles at the heart of the disabled movement:
- Nothing about us without us. In contrast to products or platforms that are designed for us by well-meaning organizations (and especially entrepreneurs, and especially among that group tech entrepreneurs with an idea for a wellness app) — or less well-meaning organizations that see a niche — co-production involves those who experience a problem playing a key role in its solution, being integral to key decision-making teams, and even having extra weight when decisions are taken and strategies set.
- Deeds not words. In contrast to high profile endorsement or consultation that is designed to satisfy the market’s desire to see conspicuous social conscience but pays little attention to the actual needs or wishes of disabled people, co-production is about building the change we need and want. It is characterised by an emphasis on understatement and underpromising with a view to over delivering actual benefit by seeking to fully understand the actual problems we have and then engaging us to help deliver the best solution possible within any unavoidable constraints.
Internal Champions
I will also talk at another time about the role and importance of internal champions. I will say here that Experian had these. Both in terms of the project lead, whose idea Support Hub was initially, and a key senior manager whose lived experience gave the project personal resonance, and who had the power to spread the word and champion the cause internally. Both of these are immensely valuable to a project like this.
Experts by Experience and Expertise
I was approached to be part of the Support Hub project by my long-term collaborator and friend Chris Fitch. Chris is one of the UK’s leading experts on consumer vulnerability, and is probably on speed dial (Is speed dial still a thing? Asking for someone born long before the internet was a thing) for anyone who’s anyone in financial services or utilities.
That was very early on in the process of turning an idea into a project, when Experian realised that having a voice of lived experience in the room, who also knew about financial services, design, and communications, was the piece of the puzzle they were missing. I had been writing about the need for tell it once systems for some time, and Chris joined the dots for the Experian team.
Being as unfiltered as I could to give them a taste of what the internet would have in store if Support Hub didn’t live up to its promise, I must have come across as what I would technical;ly call “a right oik.” It’s a role I’ve played a lot over the years. Usually, in fairness, when I am being my most useful to people who have specifically asked me to be honest and brutal. One of the things about not understanding social codes is that if someone asks you to be honest, they get honesty!
What surprised me from the start was how much they not only listened but acted. They hadn’t just sought my opinions because they wanted to say they had done so. But because there were areas where they knew I could help them with what to do.
There have been many changes I had the good fortune of seeing embedded in Support Hub, and the environment in which it exists, as a direct result of my interventions.
These include concrete elements like the wording of the “how-to” video on the landing page. And the particular framing of the problem Support Hub sets out to solve.
But what are most significant from a co-production perspective have been some of the platform’s design principles.
The Impact of Transparency
Primary among those is transparency. Transparency is important to everyone, and all firms in theory realise this, and speak about it.
But the radical nature of the transparency that disabled consumers need in order to navigate and trust a platform goes way beyond that. We have spent our lives being made promises in words that are broken in deeds. And we have also spent our lives discovering very late in the process, after committing precious energy to something, that we are unable to use something after all. Because the designers assumed it was straightforward. Or assumed that a few exceptions to a general rule wouldn’t matter.
The result is we feel lied to. But we are also resentful. Because the resources we have already sunk into something useless can never be recovered. And while for non-disabled people that might amount to a few minutes, for us it could be weeks of our lives lost. Sometimes we have a few clear minutes a month. If we sink those into something that we is useless, that has a devastating effect. And could have been avoided by transparency.
This goes against all received wisdom, of course. To give the most prominent place to the things a platform can’t do seems like the kiss of death. But here’s the thing. Pretending those things don’t exist won’t make us able to use your platform. They will just make us angry and frustrated when we find out. Stating shortcomings up front is the ultimate accessibility aid, because it gives us the information we need to decide how to deploy the very few precious resources we have.
The Support Hub team was willing to embrace that. And they brought the firms who signed up for the pilot with them. As a result, every time Support Hub doesn’t do something, it tells you. And every time the result of doing something is less than you might expect, it tells you (for example when firms HAVE to use the phone, for example around fraud). And the result has been consistent positive feedback from testing.
Seeing my fingerprints on the final product (and hearing in the case of the how-to video on the home page, the text for which I also wrote) has been very satisfying. But most meaningful has been not only being in the room at the key moments, but always feeling that my being there was not only a given but a prerequisite.
Accessibility baked in
The Digital Accessibility Centre is a disabled-led organization that audits websites and other digital materials for accessibility against a wide range of criteria. They were called in before the very first demonstration model of Support Hub was built to ensure it was built accessibly from the start. That’s so valuable, because it is so much easier (and more cost effective!) to start off right than to have to retro fit. Indeed, the inertia cost of not calling in accessibility experts from the beginning of projects is the single biggest factor I see in later stage consultations not leading to change.
From the earliest stages, the Support Hub team wanted the platform to go beyond a compliant level of adherence to WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standards. Bringing DAC in and having them audit everything the team produced for over a year was a key part of this.
The idea was not just to have materials reactively assessed, though that happened a lot. The idea was to ensure that process of assessment led to an embedded institutional knowledge. As a result, the Support Hub design team has developed expertise in everything from font and contrast ratio to screen reader tagging and facilitating keyboard navigation. This expertise will have a lasting impact not just on the materials that Experian produce far beyond Support Hub but on its design culture.
Support Hub doesn’t look like a lot of cutting edge fintech platforms. And the Support Hub team is proud of that, and regularly starts demonstrations to outside parties by explaining that user experience and the user interface have been driven by accessibility first — above any concerns of fashion or aesthetics.
Deploying internal expertise
Experian ’involved its own disabled staff in the project from an early stage. Not only did the staff network provide crucial feedback from an early stage, but disabled staff played key roles within the central Support Hub team.
Crucially, these often provided complementary experience, filling in key holes within the three initial areas of sight loss, hearing loss, and mental health and dementia.
This avoided one of the biggest time drains I see on so many projects: a team spending irrecoverable time (often months in chronological time, and years in person-time) pursuing what eventually turn out to be dead ends.
Having someone in the room who is not only empowered to address this from their lived experience, whatever their titular role within a team, but given a red card to use where needed, no matter the enthusiasm for an idea, provides immense value.
As I say, this is a non-exhaustive list. But it gives an insight into the difference involving lived experience in a co-production project can make. In terms of customer satisfaction. In terms of genuine authenticity. And in terms of saving your precious time when developing something for stakeholders whose lives might be different from yours.
Other instalments in this series of articles
Support Hub: Making accessibility accessible for disabled customers
If you would like me to work with you on accessibility, whether that’s reaching disabled customers, making your organization one where the people who work there can thrive, or helping you understand where your greatest need for cultural or structural change might be, please get in touch at rogueinterrobang@gmail.com
Additional resources
Downloads
A Problem Shared: a new way of building accessibility into financial services and beyond (a detailed description of the co-production process behind Support Hub, outlining the challenges faced and solutions found)
Building Bridges: A project to enable better services to create better lives for disabled people (an in-depth paper looking at how the lists of support needs at the heart of Support Hub were, and continue to be, compiled)
Articles I have written on related subjects
What are microfrictions and why do they have such a disastrous impact on disabled people?
Friction and the social model of disability: from the aggregation of marginal gains to compounding
Is friction stopping you winning at life?
Websites
WhatWeNedd.Support The open source platform dedicated to producing annual standardised lists of support needs, built by lived experience in discussion with the industries whose job it is to implement those needs
