Project 01 / 08 · Social Policy
Digital Inclusion Programme
Client
North East Lincolnshire Council
Role
Lead Service Designer
Sector
Social Policy & Inclusion
Year
Sept 2025 – Present
Role
Lead service designer. Research, service design and internal tooling, end to end.
Team
15 people, with a core group of about 6 meeting in sprints. Data and Insights, ICT and Digital, research and engagement, Children's Services, the ICB and, in the final phase, Comms.
Timeframe
September 2025 to present. Define ran February/March to August 2026. Now in Deliver.
Methods
Double diamond, workshops, day-in-the-life and as-is mapping, surveys, interviews, behavioural systems mapping, rapid prototyping.
Outcome
A skills problem is now treated as a structural one. Four prototypes are in pilot, and a plain-language tool is being tested for council-wide use.
The problem
A 2021 digital exclusion discovery fizzled out before anything shipped. In 2025, after the Government's action plan, we restarted it.
The inclusion webpages had not been updated since 2022. Links were broken, support routes had closed, and nobody owned delivery. Past initiatives had low uptake. Digital skills were treated as the whole problem, and residents were being sent to help that no longer existed.
My role
I led the project from start to finish. I designed and facilitated every resident workshop myself, about 80 residents in total, plus a 140-staff session and a separate staff workshop of about 45 people that produced 22 user stories.
I turned the research into six insights, a storyboard, an actor behaviour map, personas and a sprint action plan. I gave more than 14 presentations, starting with the CEO and Directors, then ADs and their managers, then individual teams. I have presented the work at SOCITM and, with DSIT, at Connected Britain.
On the DSIT work in Waltham, I joined as the service designer, ran interviews and mapped the findings on Miro.
Storyboard
Three moments where a well-designed service still leaves someone out.
Recreated and simplified for confidentiality.
Moment
Young people entering work
Where it breaks
Few job-focused digital skills beyond a phone.
Moment
Patients seeking support
Where it breaks
GPs lack clear digital referral routes.
Moment
Older adults managing money
Where it breaks
Fear of scams stops online payments.
Key decisions
I treated it as structural exclusion.
The council could have run another skills programme. I chose to fix the structure, because residents told us they were shut out by unclear information, hidden offline steps and fragile confidence. Skills were not the main barrier.
I kept the programme focused.
When requests came to fold in children's services and to revive a defunded language programme, I said no. I chose depth over breadth, because neither had evidence it would change an outcome. The aim was to change one outcome properly, not to make the numbers look good.
I met people where they were.
Surveys worked for care leavers. For other groups, I chose in-person workshops, interviews and day-in-the-life mapping, because that is where the honest answers came from.
I let testers shape the readability tool.
Version one gave one score. Testers said a score does not tell you what to fix, so I kept building until it showed the exact sentences to change and suggested better wording.
Who we heard from
Five groups, five different barriers.
Recreated and simplified for confidentiality.
Demographic
Lower-income households
Gets in the way
No device or data.
What helped
Scenario sessions with signposting.
Demographic
Careers Cafe visitors
Gets in the way
Job-focused skills beyond a phone.
What helped
Scenarios built for them.
Demographic
Disabled residents
Gets in the way
Tools and formats that do not fit.
What helped
Targeted signposting, quick fixes live.
Demographic
ESOL communities (Arabic)
Gets in the way
Information not in their language.
What helped
Sessions and forums in Arabic.
Demographic
Older adults
Gets in the way
Fear of scams. Tasks assumed solo.
What helped
Family, community, volunteer visits.
Drivers of exclusion
Six drivers, none of them about skills alone.
Recreated and simplified for confidentiality.
Driver
Access is not universal
Who is excluded
Driver
Confidence is fragile
Who is excluded
Driver
Services assume independence
Who is excluded
Driver
Information is unclear
Who is excluded
Driver
Offline steps stay hidden
Who is excluded
Driver
Skills do not match
Who is excluded
I aligned outcomes to the Marmot Principles: eight priorities English councils use to reduce health inequalities.
The readability tool
Council content read at ages 14 to 17. Some wards sit far lower, with reading ages as low as 7.
That comes from the literacy rates and data sets we use internally. I built a staff-only tool, hosted internally, that holds no data. Paste content in, choose the audience and area, and it detects the content type. It scores with Flesch-Kincaid, SMOG, Gunning Fog and others, picks the right ones for that content, and shows a red, amber or green status. It lists the sentences to review, suggests replacement phrases and checks structure: action, audience, process, evidence and next steps.
Recreated and simplified for confidentiality.
We are writing to let you know about your recent request. In order to commence the assessment process, it is necessary for you to furnish supplementary documentation as soon as is practicable. Please call us if you have any questions. Failure to respond may result in the cessation of your application.
Sample text, written for this mock-up.
Suggested changes
commence → start
furnish supplementary documentation → send us more documents
cessation → end
Understanding check
Outcome
What I made
- ·Six resident workshops and two staff sessions
- ·Six insights and a sprint action plan
- ·A storyboard, actor behaviour map and personas
- ·The readability tool
What changed
- ·Staff had not realised how many people were being excluded. It became a priority and a hot topic across teams, and residents said they felt seen.
- ·Dead and broken pages were fixed or removed.
- ·Friendship at Home, a volunteer group that visits older residents to help with devices, began visits while the project was still running.
- ·On the council's crisis support page, the tool took the reading age from 17 to 12.
- ·The tool is deployed in two of my current projects, with eight live testers from different teams piloting it.
- ·Four prototypes are in a 4 to 8 week rapid pilot. Funding bids are in progress, and details are not public.
There is no before and after number yet. The prototype pilot will give the first.
What happens next
The four prototypes finish their 4 to 8 week pilot, the funding bids continue and the tool moves towards council-wide use.
Reflection
The readability work taught me how much a measurable test changes a conversation. A crisis support page that read at age 17 is easy to dismiss as a feeling, and hard to dismiss as a number. Once we could show it, rewriting it down to age 12 was not a debate. I would bring that kind of evidence into every stage of the programme, as early as possible.