User testing with live data will be “absolutely critical” to the future design of pension dashboards, Pensions Dashboards Programme (PDP) principal, Chris Curry, has said.

Addressing the Pensions Age Autumn Conference, Curry highlighted the importance of user testing with live data, which will be starting from April next year.

“What we have not been able to do is to test with live data. If you’re testing with dummy data, you get very different types of responses and very different focuses than when you use live data,” he explained.

He pointed out that the mock-up the PDP has been using so far has highlighted user interest in design elements like font and colour, compared to when using “actual data” users are questioning the meaning and the amount shown and what to do with it.

“It just changes the focus of the user testing as we go through,” he said. “It [live data] is more about the way that pension dashboards look and feel as they go forward.

“It’s really important that we have enough pensions available to be found, that we can test on.”

Curry also said that dashboards testing was “all going broadly to plan at the moment.”

However, he warned: “It is a really important part of what we are doing, we need to make sure the system is tested adequately initially for connections and for the providers who are coming into the system before we open it up to everyone else.”

All pension providers and schemes with over 100 members must connect to the pensions dashboards ecosystem by 31 October 2026.

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