Your Client's Mental Health: Here are 5 Website Tips
Mental health is often an overlooked detail when designing a website and the user’s experience. Your website can act as an important factor in encouraging people who are struggling to seek professional help.
Although the online world seems to offer a lot of mental health resources, the usability of websites are not always designed to thoughtfully serve people with mental illness. Thoughtful designers can help minimise the unique design challenge that mental health presents through various strategic design practices and practicing empathetic design for users with mental illness, here are a few basic things to consider:
Choosing colour to create a calming and safe experience
Use colour strategically to create a safe and calm space for your users
People are physiologically, psychologically and socially influenced by colour, it has the power to affect our emotions and also our health. Colour psychology (the study of how colour affects human behaviour) has been used by advertisers and marketers for a long time to affect and evoke emotions as well as to communicate specific messages to their markets. When designing with mental health in mind, we can aim to use colour to create a space that feels welcoming, warm, safe, calm and even healing. Colour can be an effective tool in conveying our message and helping potential clients feel contained and supported.
2. Minimise complexity by creating a clean and simple design
Creating visual hierarchy helps organise your website
When designing your website it can be helpful to take a moment to consider the state of mind of someone who may be visiting your site. Organise your website so that it is as easy as possible for potential clients to find exactly what they need without feeling lost or adding to their anxiety. A clean, straightforward design can help users focus on what they are looking for without getting distracted or expending too much energy.
Incorporate white space and thoughtful visual hierarchy in design.
Clever use of colour and imagery can be used to avoid cognitive overload.
3. Focus on User Experience
A responsive website looks good across all devices
Your users will arrive at your website in different states of mind. Some may be dealing with a lot more anxiety than others. To help them we can reduce their cognitive load by making it easy for them to be able to find and navigate to important information as easily as possible. Here are some ways we can achieve that:
Use clear navigation and intuitive page layouts
Make sure your website is responsive (looks good across all devices)
Make important information clear
Distinctly define buttons and make it easy for users to achieve their goal
Display all your services clearly on your landing page so that users can understand what you offer
Explain the process that will take place after they contact you
Use clear and empathetic language throughout
4. Create a predictable journey through the use of consistency
Consistent layouts throughout your website can bring about a predictable experience for users
Consistency is one of the most important elements in web and branding design. It creates a safe space of familiarity and helps avoid confusion while delivering a message in a clear and effective way.
Ensuring buttons are the same colour and size
Create the same font sizes across all pages and use different sizes to create a clear visual hierarchy.
Follow the same page layouts across the website
5. Include testimonials and reviews
Testimonials and Reviews can help social proof your service
Social proofing your services can really help a user who may be on the fence about committing to getting in touch or taking the next step in their journey to begin therapy. Social proof is the result of a deeply rooted psychological bias, it implies trust in other people. The forms of this trust include the belief that the majority knows better and that the best way to make a decision is to look at the decisions other people have made. Testimonials and reviews work really well in social proofing your services and gaining important trust along the user’s journey.
Designing your website for mental health doesn’t have to be complex. Planning a thoughtful approach to creating a website that doesn’t add to the users’ stress, anxiety or depression is all it takes. By placing the user’s well-being first we can design for good and encourage positive change. Exercising empathy towards users’ needs can create a more positive digital space where technology supports and enhances our mental health rather than detracting from it.
