Design with Care: Creating Digital Services for Vulnerable Audiences
When services address mental health, sexuality, or identity, design choices can determine whether someone seeks help. For people in vulnerable situations, aesthetics and functionality alone are not enough. Design must be guided by care, insight, and empathy.
Design thinking: putting people at the center
Across projects such as Ungdomstelefonen, Skeiv Ungdom and RVTS Øst, we have encountered a shared challenge: lowering the threshold for seeking help, asking questions, and finding reliable information. Solving this requires more than solid technology. It requires understanding and empathy.
At the core of design thinking is empathy for users. It is about genuine interest and respect in order to understand real needs and create solutions together with the people who will use them. This is a process where insight, innovation, and practical implementation evolve and improve over time. At Increo, this approach forms the foundation of everything we do, especially when working with vulnerable audiences, where empathy is both a tool and a value.
Here are some of the key design lessons these projects have taught us:
Finding the balance: playful, but never trivial
Ungdomstelefonen is a service run by Queer Youth, offering young people the opportunity to speak anonymously about sexuality, gender, identity, and emotional wellbeing. These are important, yet delicate topics.
Our starting point was a clear vision: to develop a digital platform that feels safe, approachable, and anonymous for young users. It should not feel overly “adult,” while still conveying trust and credibility. The insights we gained led to a warm color palette and a rainbow-inspired design that communicates inclusive values without becoming frivolous. Clear language, rooted in young people’s own ways of expressing themselves, helped foster trust and calm.
Language and content that create safety and belonging
In the knowledge portal we developed for Skeiv Ungdom, A Handbook for Queer Sex, we worked deliberately on how to reach young people through search, without relying on simplified or stereotypical terms. For us, this became a valuable learning experience in what design thinking is really about: challenging our own assumptions and stereotypes.
How do you respond to searches like “Is it normal to be unsure about your gender?” without reinforcing clichés?
The solution was a searchable FAQ section that speaks with young people, not to them. We actively involved the target audience in shaping both content and functionality. At the same time, we developed illustrations and visual elements that avoid putting users into predefined boxes, while accounting for diversity, inclusion, and universal design. The goal was to create a design that makes room for everyone, rather than defining who fits in.
Making complex knowledge accessible
In our work with RVTS Øst, which holds national responsibility for competence development in violence, traumatic stress, and suicide prevention, design thinking proved essential in managing complexity. The challenge was not only to develop a new digital solution, but to bring together extensive professional content, diverse audiences, and multiple needs into one cohesive platform.
Through insight-driven work and close dialogue with professionals, we sought to understand how content is actually used in practice, and which barriers hinder learning and accessibility. The design process focused on creating structure, clarity, and flow, enabling users to find relevant knowledge more easily and learn at their own pace.
In a field that deals with serious and demanding topics, it is crucial that technology does not create distance, but support. Here, design with care meant making complex knowledge more accessible, without oversimplifying what truly matters.
Technology that meets people
Across all these projects, one principle remains constant: technology is a tool, empathy is the driving force. It is about understanding who we are designing for, and why they come to us. That is why we work closely with users and organizations, taking the time to listen, truly listen, before we design.
We call it design with care.
Design with care: a responsibility we take seriously
As an agency focused on digital innovation and service development, Increo carries a responsibility when working with vulnerable groups. We aim to deliver solutions that work, but more importantly, solutions that matter. Design with care is not a method. It is a mindset. One that strives to make a real difference in people’s lives.
Want to learn more about how we work with empathy in technology, or have a project where the audience deserves special consideration? We would love to hear from you.
