Designing an urgent channel shift

When a user completes a task on a channel, they expect it completed on that channel without having to switch

While systems should be designed to reduce this, sometimes they are out of the Council's control, including prompting a user to call police, fire or ambulance.

To reduce the friction of this channel switch, we designed, iterated, designed, and iterated again and again, until we had a solution that worked for all users and had a high success rate of a channel switch.

Testing included use of colour to prompt urgency, the written language, functionality and layout of the screen.

The prompt features the number to call, along with a button for the device to easily start the call, cost of that call, opening hours and accessible alternatives for users who cannot call.

The images below show some of the different variations that were tested, with the first one now being used across Council services.