UX DESIGN · HEALTH · RESEARCH · 2024
Care When It's Hardest to Ask
Redesigned BC Mental Health and Substance Use Services' digital presence to reach vulnerable audiences with compassion and cultural sensitivity.
THE CHALLENGE
The Challenge
Complex info. Vulnerable audiences.
The task was to organize enormous amounts of clinical information across varied user groups without appearing overly clinical, while highlighting BCMHSUS's distinctive health research capabilities and creating a space that felt genuinely welcoming and culturally safe for Indigenous communities across BC.
KEY INSIGHT
"People in crisis don't consult this website."
The BCMHSUS site serves researchers, healthcare workers making referrals, and families of referred individuals. People in active crisis are not the audience. This single discovery eliminated the need for emergency alert patterns and completely reframed our design priorities.
THE APPROACH
The Approach
Audience-first information design.
We identified four priority audiences through research: clinical professionals, health administrators, patients and families, and prospective employees. Navigation was restructured into utility and main menus with accessible click-triggered dropdowns, and the 'Make a Referral' flow was rebuilt into clinic-level child pages through iterative stakeholder collaboration. A dedicated strand of the project focused on cultural safety: working with Indigenous advisors to establish language and tone guidelines that ensured the site reflected and respected Indigenous communities across BC.
Identified User Groups
Clinical Professionals
Healthcare workers who need to quickly find program details and make referrals on behalf of patients.
Health Administrators
Internal staff navigating operational information, policies, and inter-departmental resources.
Patients & Families
People seeking information about a referred program, often in a stressful situation and needing clarity above all else.
Prospective Employees
Job seekers looking for career opportunities across BCMHSUS's many specialized programs.
The Outcome
Stakeholders reported strong satisfaction with the final result. The BCMHSUS site became the pilot for all 14 subsequent PHSA website redesigns, with the navigation architecture, referral flow, and accessibility patterns becoming the provincial standard.
