Fostering Trauma-Informed Services
research & design
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research & design ✦
About the Project
How do you design for care during a crisis?
Our client runs a national crisis line that provides people with emotional support and care. The goal was to identify opportunities for the organization to create a better help seeker experience, particularly those of high risk. As this project was research-focused, the project began with our researchers conducting over 50 qualitative interviews with help-seekers, crisis counselors, and leadership.
Design was brought in once research was complete. Based on the help seeker’s user journey and opportunities for impact, four separate concepts were visualized. Trauma-informed concepts, such as transparency, predictability, agency, and safety were cornerstones to our illustrated service enhancements.
The research findings, user journey map, and design opportunities for intervention informed the client’s concurrent work, and the client is using the findings to build internal buy-in.
Design’s Process
01
Mapping Moments that Matter
Once the qualitative interviews and synthesis had been complete, design was welcomed into the project to illustrate potential interventions based off our findings. Research shared an initial outline of the journey map, and designers reviewed the content to collaboratively surface nuances, priorities, and messaging that was critical to the narrative. By building the storyline together, design was able to create the proper emphasis per segment.
The user journey map plotted time against potential impact, surfacing 11 moments from first hearing about the service through the follow-up weeks later. We anchored every moment to four shared themes—transparency, respect, connection, responsiveness—so the client had one lens for evaluating any idea.
02
Designing for Opportunity
Concurrently, designers were able to build off researcher’s identified opportunities and visualized concrete responses for the highest-impact moments: a guided-support role for people still deciding whether to call, calming content and a warmer intake experience during the wait to connect, a "familiar caller" profile so people stop re-telling their story, and three alternative concepts for the documentation tool counselors said made calls feel scripted. There were framed as provocations, not finished designs, to springboard ideas.
03
Discussions by Design
The design team contributed to the final presentation by sharing the trauma-informed details that supported each intervention. Each feature was detailed to account for transparency, predictability, agency, and safety. The final report is used to build internal buy-in across the organization.
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password protected ✦
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