Mental health charity · 2024
Refuge support pathway.
- Year
- Role
- 2024
- Service design · Web build
The brief
A UK mental health charity needed to redesign the first contact pathway for survivors. Their existing site mirrored the structure of their funders' requirements — what *we* asked of survivors — rather than what survivors actually needed at the moment of reaching out.
The approach
- 1.Eight conversations with people who had used the service. Common thread: the moment of reaching out is exhausting; every additional click is a small invitation to give up.
- 2.Restructured the journey around the survivor's emotional state, not the organisation's structure. Three clear next-steps on the landing page, each labelled in survivor-language not institutional language.
- 3.Built with safe-exit, anonymous browse, and quick-leave patterns. Tested with practitioners and survivors before launch.
The result
First-contact-to-first-call time dropped from a multi-day median to within the same session. Practitioners reported less time spent re-orienting new clients who had a clearer picture of what was on offer before walking in the door.
“alesce's knowledge, sensitivity, and rigour to decision-making ensured the project ran successfully and on time.”