988 Lifeline
Our Client
The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline provides free, confidential support to people in emotional distress, helping individuals and communities find hope and connection in moments of crisis.
Our Approach
For the national launch and rebrand, Made by We created a unified web design system that successfully brought the new 988 identity to life online, reaching 6M+ active users over 12 months. We collaborated closely with Vibrant Emotional Health and the overseeing government department, SAMHSA, for a coordinated joint launch.
Scope
_ Strategy
_ Brand Expansion
_ Web Design
_ WordPress Dev
_ Multilingual
_ Migration
Top 1% Performing Homepage for Accessibility Ranking from WebAIM 2025
Lighthouse Mobile Best Practices Score
Custom branded components configured in Figma in 4 color modes
We created a structured color foundation that powers accessible, user-selectable modes.
We created four accessible color modes: Light, Dark, High-Contrast Light (AAA), and High-Contrast Dark (AAA), supporting a wide range of user needs and preferences. The site fully adapts to a visitor’s system-level preferences, and users can also manually select their preferred mode for optimal comfort and accessibility.
Expanding the Brand Palette for Accessibility
We evolved the 988 brand colors into a fully AA-compliant palette, testing every combination across site components so content managers can focus on creating content, not checking contrast ratios.
Project Summary
Made by We was engaged to conduct a deep discovery process to help the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (NSPL) understand how people were actually using their website. This work included 15 one-on-one interviews, 122 survey responses, 7 moderated UX and tree-testing sessions, 24,000 page recordings, 6 page-level heatmaps, and an analysis of 12 months of Google Analytics data. Together, this research highlighted where the site was helping, and where it was unintentionally creating friction for people in moments of crisis.
When NSPL transitioned to the newly designated three-digit number, 988, they tasked us with rebuilding their website. We identified three primary goals to guide the redesign: helping people reach support quickly through clear and simplified content, expanding access through multilingual content, and establishing a flexible design system that could evolve alongside the developing 988 brand. Throughout the project, we collaborated closely with SAMHSA, Vibrant, and an external marketing team, all while working toward a public launch date.
We used predictive heat-mapping to determine optimal placement for the four ways to connect with a counselor (Call, Text, Chat, and American Sign Language) so visitors in crisis could immediately find the support they needed.
One of the top visited pages on the site was the most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), which received one of the most significant content enhancements. Previously presented as one long page, this information is now a category-organized resource with individual links for each question (and answer). This shift gives visitors a direct path to answers while also making the content more discoverable and shareable overall.
To support long-term scalability and editorial independence, we created 200 custom-branded components organized into a Figma library. These components were the foundation of a Custom WordPress Site, which features a block-based page editing system for content administrators. Editors can mix-and-match 20+ styled content block options to create new pages from scratch without breaking from established design patterns. Every block supports all four site-wide color modes and maintains a minimum 4.5:1 contrast, so editors never need to manually evaluate accessibility. The site launched with two fully translated languages and is configured to support more in the future.
Clarity guided every part of the build: from high-contrast modes to a dyslexia-friendly typeface. The impact is reflected in the data. Comparing 10/2024 - 10/2025 to the previous year’s data (10/2023- 10/2024), GA4 shows an 83% increase in average engagement time.
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