Social Design for low-literacy

Abstract

In the Netherlands, 2,5 million people are low-literate, which means they have trouble with reading, writing, numeracy or digital skills. As a result, they can experience difficulty with everyday tasks such as making a grocery list or taking public transport. Low-literacy negatively impacts both the individual as well as society. Despite efforts to address low-literacy, the percentage of low-literates is rising. It is not just the older generation, five percent of 16-24-year-olds are low-literate, and children of low-literate parents are three times more likely to become low-literate themselves than other children are. Two-thirds of low-literates in the Netherlands are natives, but in practice, they are the group reached less by literacy efforts. They are often ashamed and successful at hiding it because they are fluent speakers. Those in programmes are often already in mature adulthood, whereas for both the individual and society it would be beneficial if education is sought earlier in life. Therefore, this thesis tries to design an intervention reach and activate a younger group to want to address their literacy issues. The main research question is: “What are the barriers and enablers to reach and activate native Dutch low- literates, in particular, young parents?”Because low-literacy is a social problem, both the individual and societal perspective is explored: the individual perspective through interviews with the target group, the societal perspective through desk-research, and both through conversations with employees at Stichting Lezen & Schrijven who have much experience with the topic. These explorations resulted in ten design factors that serve as a basis for the intervention, as well as the insight that the low-literate’s dependency on those around him as well as the government, might be the core of the problem. As a result of this dependency, people’s self-efficacy can be diminished. A third perspective, a theoretical one, focussed on self-efficacy and related constructs, is taken. This perspective resulted in 18 extra design factors. At the same time of the theoretical exploration, the design of the intervention was started, in this way both influenced each other in the focus they had. The 19 theoretical factors go beyond the context of low-literacy and could, therefore, be applied to design projects that wish to increase self-efficacy. Resulting from insights based on context and theory, a design intervention is created that focusses on supporting young low-literate parents to engage with their children in the context of literacy through crafting. The design intervention is proposed to be offered as a promotional 11-week programme at a supermarket, available to all parents of young children, as a way to not single out those that are low-literate. The crafting instruction contains very little text, nevertheless the difficulty will slowly rise each week, the goal is to make the parent feel capable (self-efficacious) but at the same time show them they could benefit from improving their skills. The design is evaluated with professionals and users, showing that it is overall well-liked but the link to education could be improved. Due to time limitations, it was not possible to assess whether the intervention manages to increase self-efficacy, a pilot is proposed as a way to verify the effectiveness of the design. As a result of these evaluations, a final design is created that incorporates reading of the instruction even more fully.