Many seniors in Australia and globally face challenges in participating in our increasingly digital society. During COVID-19, for example, many older Australians experienced major difficulties accessing health, welfare, and business services online and keeping socially connected while being among the least equipped for the shift to digital life.  

New research, Towards socially inclusive design: an action design research project supporting social inclusion of senior citizens, recently published in the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS) shows that socially inclusive design – creating technology that builds trust, confidence, and belonging – is essential to facilitating meaningful integration of socially excluded groups into contemporary society.  

In the paper, led by UNSW Business School’s Associate Professor Yenni Tim, the authors argue that while digital technologies can expand participation and access, they also risk deepening inequalities when not designed inclusively. Seniors, in particular, face barriers to using digital tools effectively, limiting their ability to engage with essential services and maintain social connections.  

Through a unique partnership between academics and the Australian Red Cross, the researchers co-designed a digital gateway tool for seniors, offering fresh lessons for responsible, inclusive technology design. A/Prof. Tim explained: “We found that the biggest challenges are not just about digital skills or access to devices, but that technology often falls short when it ignores people’s social realities.”

The paper’s findings underscore the central thesis of socially inclusive design: meaningful use of technologies is not simply a technical issue, but a social one. “Feelings of unfamiliarity, intimidation, or the sense that a tool has little relevance to daily life can stop people from engaging. These deeper social factors matter just as much as the technical ones. Unless designs take them into account, even the most advanced technologies risk reinforcing exclusion rather than overcoming it,” said A/Prof. Tim. 

The problem: digital inequality and senior social exclusion 

The digital divide has long been understood as a matter of access to devices and the skills to use them. While these remain real challenges, they are not the whole story – particularly for the older generation of Australians. As technology evolves at a rapid pace, seniors often find themselves excluded not just because of limited training or resources, but because many digital tools are designed without their needs, contexts, or lived experiences in mind. 

This exclusion can lead to broader social consequences. Older people risk being cut off from vital services, community engagement, and even economic opportunities. 

Learn more: The challenges of implementing new technology safely – and fairly

Sumedha Wijeratne is an IT professional and former Information Security Manager at the Australian Red Cross who collaborated with A/Prof. Tim on the study. He explained: “The older cohort has lived through so much change and is very resilient and also very capable. They still have a lot to offer the workforce and society at large," he said.

“However, the tech landscape keeps changing even faster. Systems and apps tend to be designed for the digital-natives who are born into these, and making this older cohort digitally disadvantaged and vulnerable.”

To address this, A/Prof. Tim and the research team set out to develop and test the idea of socially inclusive design – a framework for building technology that not only functions well but also supports trust, agency, and belonging. Their aim was to explore how technology could be designed to help seniors engage in ways that feel relevant, comfortable, and meaningful in practice. 

The research: socially inclusive design 

Initiated through a UNSW Business School Sandbox partnership, through one of A/Prof. Tim’s undergraduate digital innovation courses, researchers and students worked directly with the Australian Red Cross and seniors to co-design a digital gateway tool.  

The Sandbox program was developed by A/Prof. Tim offers a unique and transformative approach to connect important societal challenges with university teaching and research. This digital gateway tool was specifically aimed at helping older people navigate digital environments more easily and confidently, while maintaining independence and social connection.

In this way, unlike traditional top-down design methods, the study employed a “co-design methodology”. This meant seniors were not treated as simply “end users” but rather active participants shaping the creation of the tool itself. The researchers facilitated workshops with seniors and Australian Red Cross practitioners, asking them what functions the technology should perform and how it could be woven into daily life. 

This hands-on approach surfaced some unique insights. First, it revealed the importance of familiarity, comfort, and social relevance over technical sophistication. In doing so, A/Prof. Tim explained that it has challenged long-standing assumptions about what makes technology inclusive. 

A/Prof. Tim also highlighted how working directly with seniors changed the research team’s assumptions about technology design. “Working side by side with people shifted the focus in important ways. Instead of asking, ‘What features should this technology have?’ we asked, ‘What would make this meaningful in your daily life?’,” she said.  

“We saw that familiarity, comfort, and social relevance often mattered more than technical sophistication. For example, design elements that felt familiar, such as conversational interactions, had a bigger impact than more advanced functions like interactive learning modules.  

“This challenged the common assumption that inclusion is about adding features or providing more training and highlighted that meaningful design starts with everyday life.” 

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Toward socially inclusive design: lessons for practitioners 

Another key finding was the need to embed inclusion as a core design principle, not an afterthought. “Designers and organisations need to move beyond treating inclusion as a purely technical problem. True inclusion means recognising and addressing the social context of people’s lives,” explained A/Prof. Tim. 

“The next step is to embed inclusion as a principle from the start, not as an afterthought. That means designing with trust, agency, and relevance in mind, and involving people directly in the process so their perspectives shape the outcome.” 

This shifts responsibility from users to designers: instead of asking people to adapt endlessly to new technologies, designers must ensure technology adapts to people’s lives. “By doing this, we can move toward responsible design practices where technology doesn’t just function, but genuinely connects with and supports the people who use it,” added A/Prof. Tim. 

The practitioner partner has also echoed this view, pointing out that seniors bring resilience and adaptability but face structural exclusion. “The older cohort are built very strong and resilient," said Mr Wijeratne. "They have seen, struggled through and survived so much technological change. They continue to contribute, add value, enrich lives and improve society. However, they continue to fight through the digital disadvantage that accumulates over time, some better than others, but the divide continues to widen, the digital disadvantage leaving more and more behind.” 

By listening to seniors’ voices, the project was able to design technology that supported independence rather than reinforcing exclusion. “I feel this research is vital, but much more needs to be done. With each technology S-curve or Leapfrog, we create more and more digital disadvantage and exclusion in society,” explained Mr Wijeratne. 

“As we live longer, our economic, social, and psychological needs must be sustained through active participation in the digitally savvy workforce or digital-born society. If we do not protect and enable this digitally senior cohort to actively participate and engage, we not only lose out as humanity, but we add to their disadvantage and vulnerability.”  

True inclusion, he said, comes from designing with the groups we intend to support – not just for them – by creating technology that is meaningful, trustworthy, and rooted in lived experience. By co-designing a digital gateway, the study demonstrated how empathy-driven approaches can bridge the divide in ways access and training alone cannot, challenging designers, organisations, and policymakers to treat inclusion as a lived social reality.