Many charities offer support services to people who are in need and who may be in crisis. In this context UX becomes especially important, and in extreme cases could literally mean the difference between life and death.
I’ve spent a significant part of my professional life working to improve User Experience (UX), especially in the context of websites. UX Design is the process of creating services or products which are easy to use, intuitive and meaningful. It ensures that that users can quickly achieve their goals without frustration or confusion.
The core principles of good UX don’t change if a user is in crisis, but they do become potentially critical. People may be distressed, time-pressured and less able to process complex choices, so clear, low-effort paths to resolution are essential.
This was all brought home to me by a personal experience, which gave me a deep & emotional insight into how important good UX is, especially when it comes to many charity websites.
A recent diagnosis (thankfully not life-threatening), left me overwhelmed and confused. I was not calm and I was not thinking straight. I was in crisis.
In need of reassurance I did what many people in this situation do; I searched online. A relevant UK charity appeared in the results and I visited their website.
The charity that Google brought me to doesn’t offer direct crisis support but they do have a page dedicated to those in need of urgent help. However, in my agitated state I did not find this page because the link to it was not made clearly visible on the home page; it was buried at the bottom of a long drop-down menu in the site menus. Even when at one’s best, it would be easy to miss this link, but for someone in a state of crisis it’s unlikely they would find it amongst the other distractions on the page. This buried but critical link sits is in stark contrast to the large, striking button at the top of the page labelled “Donate”, which I saw immediately.
On an emotive level (emotions are a big part of UX), the lack of a clear link to the urgent help isn’t just a problem because people might struggle to find it – users also need to feel reassured that the charity understands them and is looking after them. Visitors, especially if in crisis, require a simple, intuitive experience, where needs are quickly met – this is calming and demonstrates authority, empathy, and trustworthiness.
If a vistor struggles to find what they’re looking for and can only see options not relevant to them, they will become confused or frustrated. They may even experience deeper negative emotions, which will result in a loss of trust. In my own heightened emotional state the prominent Donate button actually caused me a degree of distress. I’d gone to the website for help but here, demanding my attention, was an immediate request to give money, with no visible option to instead get some help. Selfish? Irrational? Yes. People in crisis are thinking differently.
Examples Of Good Crisis Ux
Pancreatic Cancer UK (https://www.pancreaticcancer.org.uk/) has good crisis UX. One of the first things a visitor is likely to notice when they visit the home page is the row of three prominent buttons at the top of the page. One of these is “I have pancreatic cancer” and next to that is “Someone I know has pancreatic cancer”. Both of these link to support information and relevant contact details. Even when in a poor state of mind it’s likely that a visitor will immediately find the help they need, without frustration or stress. In addition to the high visibility of the buttons, the wording is effective and shows a lot of understanding and empathy: “Someone I know has pancreatic cancer”.
It’s important to note that there is still a Donate button at the top of the page, which is clear and easy to find, but it’s given slightly less prominence than the all-important support options.
Another exmample of exemplary crisis UX, as we would expect with this particular charity, is the Samaritans (https://www.samaritans.org/). Here almost the entire visible top section of the homepage is dedicated to a clear “We’re waiting for your call”, a statement that this is 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and the reassurance that “whatever you’re going through a Samaritian will face it with you”. Even in the most distressed state a visitor will not miss this potentially life-saving call to action.
Pay-Per-Click May Compromise Ux If Not Handled With Care
It’s worth noting however that for many users who search for the Samaritans on Google the first result that currently appears is the sponsored, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Samaritans page (https://www.samaritans.org/donate-mental-health). This is somewhat problematic because although there is a small link on the top right to “Contact a Samaritan” and a link to “How We can Help” almost the entire page is dedicated to giving a donation. It’s likely that a person in crisis will still find the important option to get help, but it’s a very different experience to the homepage, and requires a little more thought to see the support options.
Pay-Per-Click, or Google Search Advertising, is an important tool for charities, especially as it’s often funded by Google Ad Grants, which provides eligible charities with approximately £8,000 ($10,000 USD) per month. Due to the prominent location of these sponsored results it’s likely that a large number of users will come to the website via one of these links. Careful management of Google Ads Grants sponsored links is therefore required to ensure that people who click on these sponsored search results are taken to the most appropriate pages, especially if they are in need of support.
For example, a large UK charity with an excellent homepage and good crisis UX has a sponsored result which links to their rather poor, text-heavy, About Us page. This page will certainly fail to meet the needs of people in crisis, but it’s also significantly inferior to the homepage for potential donors or other visitors. This is simply bad UX, and a significant number of visItors may land on this page.
It’s likely that in this case the charity in question, or whoever manages their Google Ads, did not deliberately choose this page but instead left it up to Google to decide which page to link to. Google will often do a good job making such a choice but it’s important to make sure.
Questions, Questions, So Many Questions
I’ll give just one more example of poor crisis UX. A small UK mental health charity allows users to refer themselves for mental heatlh services on their website. Those who wish to do this are confronted with a very large form on the web page which includes a huge number of questions to answer, including gender, whether the gender is the same as that assigned at birth, preferred pronouns, ethnicity, date of birth, special access requirments, etc.
Although this information is likely required, and certainly reporting requirements for grants and funding often expect detailed breakdowns of such data, the question is whether all of this information needs to be gathered at such an early stage of the process. Given that each applicant will be contacted in order to progress their application it’s likely that a lot of this data could be gathered later when the applicant is contacted.
Someone referring themself to mental health services is likely to be having difficulties and having to answer so many detailed personal questions at the precise moment they are applying for help could create unnecessary stress and in some cases cause them to give up.
A similar charity I was recently advising agreed and decided to keep their self-referal web forms simple and instead gather the supplemental data at a later stage. This makes it considerably easier and less intimidating for people to initially request mental health services.
Key Takeaways
In summary, all websites should follow the principles of good UX design. This will ensure that they are intuitive, easy to navigate, and that users will enjoy interacting with them. It’s also essential (in fact legally required) that they adhere to accessibility guidelines (WCAG 2.2) to ensure that people with physical, cognitive, or sensory disabilities can navigate the website.
Getting UX right however requires a proper consideration of the different types of user likely to visit the website. UX is not one-size-fits-all; it’s something of a balancing act to avoid favouring one vistor, a donor perhaps, at the expense of another, a beneficiary looking for urgent support. Charities who offer services to people who may be in crisis need to give special consideration to how their website can best guide and reassure visitors who may be in a somewhat compromised mental state.