SOKK
Category: Bachelor Project
Collaborators: Zahra Sedighi, Ingvild Årdal
Supervisor: Anders-Petter Andersson (NTNU Gjøvik), Jonas Naim Pedersen (SpareBank1 Østlandet), Espen Røe (SpareBank1 Østlandet)
Subject: Bachelor Project Interaction Design
When: December 2023 - May 2024 (6th semester)
About SpareBank1 Østlandet
SpareBank 1 Østlandet is a regional bank serving customers in the eastern part of Norway. It offers a range of financial services including banking, insurance, and savings products tailored to both personal and business needs. With a focus on community engagement, it emphasizes local presence and customer service.
We collaborated with SpareBank1 Østlandet in the preliminary project 'Elderly and digital exclusion,' and chose to continue this collaboration into our bachelor's thesis.
Task to be completed
We wanted to find out how we can lower the threshold for elderly users to participate digitally, and how to motivate them to maintain or increase their digital skills.
Our goal was to empower elders to manage on their own, without depending on others to perform basic daily tasks, like paying bills, booking doctor’s appointments, or booking bus tickets online. Many of these tasks require the use of BankID.
How we solved the task
We decided to combine qualitative methods like observations, in-depth interviews including think-aloud with a quantitative online survey.
Users for think-aloud interviews were recruited primarily from SpareBank1 Østlandet's customer service centers in downtown Hamar and Storhamar.
Later, we recruited most of our users through Seniornett. Our observations, the majority of interviews, testing, and the digital survey were mainly conducted at Seniornett Stange, the latter digitally via a nationwide newsletter.
The result
Findings
It is difficult for elderly people to get BankID installed, but once installed, usage is straight forward for most
Design-related issues around BankID can be solved with universal design, and by using Signe Berg and Elen Haksø's guidelines for designing for the elderly. Motivating them to actually try is a bigger issue.
Many elderly people have low self-efficacy, dread trying, and find excuses to avoid using new technology like the BankID-app. They prefer keeping the BankID code device instead of learning how to use the app.
We have seen that elderly people experience great empowerment and digital competence improvement participating in Seniornett’s courses
Solution
Elderly need to be motivated to elevate their digital competency to be able to use the BankID app. To do so, elderly need a low-threshold way to enter the digital world, and keep maintaining their digital competency and skills by keeping up their game.
Our solution to this is SOKK (Seniornett Online Competence Course). The web-based application SOKK allows elderly to complete Seniornett's courses at their level, offering practical exercises, skill tests, and simulators that allow them to explore, for example, logging in with BankID in a safe environment. The solution also offers the elderly the option to request assistance from Seniornett guides at home.
The prototype
Scenario for mobile phone prototype
Sigurd (85 years old) can't charge his car at the drop-in station due to QR code scanning difficulties and forgetting how to use the BankID app. Ultimately he gives up, hoping he has enough power to get home.
To ensure safe charging of the car in the future, Sigurd signs up for a Seniornett course at the Stange Library. Seniornett introduce him to SOKK (Seniornett Online Competency Course).
Here you can see a video demonstrating the most important features of our SOKK (Seniornett Online Kompetansekurs - Seniornett Online Competency Courses) - prototype.
Reflection
Initially, we believed BankID caused digital exclusion among the elderly and spent considerable time investigating this. However, after discussions with our supervisors at SpareBank1 Østlandet, we shifted our focus to motivating the elderly to enhance their digital skills for daily life. This new direction led to a preliminary concept for the innovative solution SOKK. While there is still much design work ahead, we hope SOKK can become a low-threshold resource for elderly individuals aiming to become digital and learn to use BankID.