New web service for award-winning mental health charity

Design and development of web service for award-winning charity providing mental health and wellbeing services in Yorkshire & Humber.

The Brief

Community Links offer pioneering life-changing mental health and wellbeing services supporting over 1,800 people across Yorkshire. 90% of Community Links’ services are commissioned by the NHS and Local Authorities in the region, partners include voluntary sector organisations and NHS Foundation Trusts.

Community Links embarked on a competitive tender process to find the right digital agency to deliver its new web service. The brief was that the web service needed to reflect the organisational values and key service users’ perception of the support and relationships that the Community Links team provide.

There was an emphasis on a co-creation process to ensure that the requirements of key stakeholders were taken on board and that adequately reflects the diversity of our online offer.

THE APPROACH

The co-creation approach involved several meetings with the Community Links team, service managers and service users. Each session was designed to be interactive and engaging so that we could extract information out of people without them needing to understand the design and development process or have any technical knowledge. The focus was on improving the user journey and for that, we needed to get into the mindset of the stakeholders.

One of the main insights to come out of the co-creation sessions was the way in which the Community Links’ services were presented. Discussions on this subject helped us re-imagine the services structure making it quick and easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for.

Thoughts, ideas and solutions were validated by the user groups at each stage ensuring that we had a strong rationale behind the delivery of the final solution.

THE SOLUTION

Using Wordpress as a Content Management System (CMS) platform, HMA created a bespoke design for the web service working closely with Community Links to refine their brand guidelines for digital use.

With a focus on ease of finding services and demonstrating the diversity of the Community Links’ offer throughout the site, we were able to deliver simple but effective platform.

The work included a full content review, stripping the information back to basics and mapping out the user experience rather than presenting it in the same way it always had been.

The Chief Executive of Community Links is delighted with the work and has already referred HMA to other organisations she is in touch with.

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