Krisenchat
A crisis chat young people actually own
Strategic Manager · Lead Product Designer · 2024–2025
Problem
A crisis service running on someone else's messaging app.
Krisenchat counsels young people in psycho-social crisis, anonymously, by chat. For years that chat was WhatsApp, which meant no support features, no room to build, and a service dependent on a third party. My task was to design a company-owned web chat from the ground up: reduce the time counselors spend per chatter without lowering how cared-for the chatter feels, give counselors tools they can hand off mid-conversation, and get the organisation off the platform it didn't control.
The chat itself, owned end to end
Same low-threshold conversation a young person already knows how to have, now on Krisenchat's own platform. Anonymous, no download, no account required to start. The entry barrier stays exactly as low as WhatsApp's, and everything around it becomes buildable.
Counselors hand off an exercise, not a link
Mid-conversation, a counselor can pass a guided exercise straight into the thread as a playable card. The chatter stays where they are. It turns the counselor's toolbox from something they describe into something they can give.
The Glücksthermometer
A feeling thermometer that lets a chatter register how they're doing without having to find the words first. Naming emotions is hard in crisis; picking one is not. In evaluation, chatters singled this out as a favourite feature.
The wait becomes part of the care
When every counselor is busy, the chatter used to sit in front of nothing. Now that gap offers an encouraging message written by another young person who has been in the same chat. Peer support filling the exact moment where the service was previously silent.
Product
From first message to ongoing support
Consent & privacy
Naming the feeling
Resources over time
Key Insight
Designing for a brain in crisis, and a brain that's fifteen
Two sets of demands had to hold at once. A person in crisis has reduced cognitive processing, trouble focusing, impaired decision-making, hypersensitivity to noise, light and clutter, which argues for low cognitive effort, no reliance on memory, and clear guidance of focus. A young person is highly reward-oriented and responsive to instant feedback. The interface resolves that tension with soft colours and light layouts carrying bright accents, short positive messaging, and familiar chat patterns, so the product reads as calming to the first brain and alive to the second.
Current-state journey map, every interaction with the service, its pain points and its moments of delight, mapped before anything was designed
Opportunity areas from the journey map, long wait times, chatters not in immediate crisis, loneliness that comes back long-term, racing thoughts at night, and therapeutic exercises that lose their effect in chat format
Relational Model of Crisis Management, crisis management happens inside the chat; everything else is pre-crisis psychoeducation around it
Low-fidelity wireframes, structure and flow resolved before any visual work, so concepts could be iterated cheaply with counselors and chatters
Design system, components, chat states, and the audiovisual cards counselors hand into the conversation
The full screen inventory as shipped to development
Stack & Tools
design
Reflection
What I’d revisit
Evaluation came back with an NPS of 80. 100% of respondents enjoyed the webchat, 100% found it easy to use, 100% felt safe on it, and 80% said they would use it regularly. The gaps users named are the honest to-do list: onboarding needs clearer guidance on first steps, there are no notifications for new messages, messages have no timestamps, and you can't reply directly to a video or exercise, which undercuts the handoff feature that people otherwise liked most. A native mobile app was the most-requested next step. Co-creation is the part I'd carry into every project: running regular sessions with a group of young chatters, not just interviews at the start, changed what got built and gave the people using it a real sense of ownership.
Next
Tend
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