We’re two-thirds of the way through our work trialling behavioural systems mapping to address digital exclusion, which is being supported by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology Digital Innovation Fund. With our partners in five unique local authority neighbourhoods, we’ve been looking at how we can take a different approach to understanding the issue among the over 60s. Director of Research & Insights, Ed Houghton shares some of the learning so far.
As we continue our behavioural systems mapping programme on digital inclusion, one thing is already clear: the value of the work lies as much in how it changes our thinking as in what it produces.
The project, funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund, focuses on understanding digital exclusion among people aged over 60. Working across five neighbourhoods with local authority partners, we set out to test whether participatory behavioural systems mapping could offer something different to more conventional approaches. And it has - although not always in the ways we had anticipated.
Shifting the problem, not the people
Most approaches to digital inclusion frame the problem as one of access or individual behaviour: people need to be trained, encouraged or ‘nudged’ to use digital services. Behavioural systems mapping flips that logic.
Instead of asking why older people don’t engage digitally, we’re asking what organisations, services, networks and relationships are doing (or not) that make exclusion more likely in the first place. The focus moves away from ‘fixing’ individuals towards examining how the system itself produces barriers. That shift alone changes the kinds of conversations stakeholders have and the kinds of solutions that start to emerge.
Photo by Annie Spratt/Unsplash
The role of neighbourhoods
Digital exclusion is often analysed at the level of cohorts or administrative boundaries. Working at neighbourhood scale has exposed a much messier — and more actionable — reality.
In workshops, stakeholders quickly moved from abstract discussions to very specific issues: a housing advice service that assumes online access; a GP practice whose digital interface unintentionally excludes older patients; a lack of informal spaces where people can ask for help without feeling judged.
These details rarely appear in high-level strategies, but they are precisely where exclusion is experienced day to day. Mapping at neighbourhood level makes these friction points visible — and therefore harder to ignore.
The limits of proxy expertise
Initially, the work relied heavily on professionals and organisations who support older residents, rather than on residents themselves. While these stakeholders brought valuable insight, the limits of that approach became apparent quickly.
Without direct input from people over 60, the emerging maps reflected what the system thought was happening, not always what actually was. Early engagement with residents has already challenged several assumptions about how people navigate digital services and where they experience difficulty.
The lesson was uncomfortable but important: no amount of professional expertise can substitute for lived experience when mapping behaviour.
Being in-person matters
Although digital workshop tools are effective, in-person mapping proved to be qualitatively different. Spending time together in the neighbourhoods being discussed grounded conversations in physical reality.
Seeing transport links, community spaces, and patterns of isolation first-hand added depth to the maps that would have been difficult to achieve remotely. The method benefited not just from participation, but from proximity. For place-based challenges, the environment is part of the system and ignoring it weakens the analysis.
Mapping as a social intervention
One of the less anticipated outcomes has been the effect of the process on stakeholders themselves. Time and again, participants expressed surprise at what others in the room were doing, or frustration that they hadn’t been working together sooner.
The workshops became spaces for connection as much as analysis. Mapping revealed gaps and overlaps, but it also created relationships that didn’t previously exist. In that sense, the process acted as a form of intervention in its own right.
Evaluating the method
The flexibility of behavioural systems mapping makes it applicable to many complex challenges, from climate action to transport, energy, and food systems. Its strength lies in making complexity visible without immediately collapsing it into a single solution.
But that same flexibility carries risks. Maps can become overly abstract, flatten nuance or drift away from any clear purpose. Without discipline, the method can produce elegant representations that are difficult to act on. The key is continual reflection: why are we mapping, who is it for and what decisions should it inform?
Looking ahead
Now we’re at the end of our workshops, we’re analysing and developing the final outputs and, already, the learning feels exciting and worthwhile. Behavioural systems mapping, done well, is forcing a re-examination of assumptions about scale, expertise, participation and responsibility. The challenge is to ensure that what has been learned doesn’t remain tied to a single project or method, but informs how complex social issues are approached more broadly in practice.