FREED (First episode Rapid Early intervention for Eating Disorders) is an innovative evidence-based NHS treatment approach focused on early intervention in eating disorders in 16 to 25-year-olds. Launched in 2014, it’s designed to give young people rapid access to specialised treatment and support tailored to their needs – and to give healthcare professionals the training, skills and patient resources to support this.
We were delighted to work with FREED on a complete rebrand and fresh new digital presence to up the energy and grow this amazing service – website, training platform and mobile app to help win the race against editing disorders.
We ran workshops with FREED and their audiences to get our heads around their hows?, whats? and whys? when it comes to accessing FREED. This showed us that their two primary types of people (patients/carers and healthcare professionals) have very different online needs.
Together, we mapped their content into a system of flexible, reusable objects that match the expectations and needs of their different people. This integrated hub of content enabled us to design their most helpful digital journeys with tailored landing pages and content structures. So, search engines can offer users a more relevant destination and the home page is a fallback to guide people to their best starting point.
Young people browse mainly on their mobiles, especially if they are investigating their health concerns, so we designed a mobile first experience with a priority plus navigation system in the mobile ‘thumb zone’.
We learned that young people (or their loved ones) usually begin with fact-finding research to validate their concerns about eating. At this stage they are not usually ready to seek help, but do have a lot of questions. We also discovered that most thought they would be less intimidated by an interactive experience rather than lots of information.
Our FREED for All landing page reaches out and guides young people through a simple clinically directed Q&A module with the reassuring advice and friendly faces of FREED team members. Each question is answered with explanations, inspiring quotes, real life stories, self help tools and next steps. This enables them to stay in their comfort zone whilst understanding the risks of eating disorders, the importance of early intervention and the FREED model.
It was clear that seeking help is a huge psychological step in the journey to recovery from an eating disorder. Understanding what help involves and how to find the right help and support is key to helping young people make this leap of faith.
We designed a simple three-choice Help & Support module to give users a friendly step-by-step guide to the practical and emotional steps to get the help and support they need, and feel ready to use. Users can access this module at any point in their journey and quickly discover their support options and if they live in a FREED service area.
For healthcare professionals work related online browsing, sharing and training is usually done on a laptop or larger device, so we wanted to deliver them a more data rich desktop experience.
The FREED for Professionals landing page is an information hub providing easy access to everything they need to quickly understand the science, structure and benefits of FREED and to share helpful resources with patients. From this starting point professionals can navigate through introductory videos, evidence and research data, case studies, tools and network information for a seamless learning and sharing experience.
These free-to-use resources aim to give users entry level access to FREED and the evidence-based inspiration to register for the professional training and toolkit to adopt the FREED model.
“Without the website and online training that Fruitful designed and built, this growth and reach (on a national scale) in only four years would not have been possible.”
Innovating intervention with FREED-M
FREED’s latest digital tool in the race against eating disorders is FREED-M; a mobile app for just for young people with eating disorders to help them make up their minds about help-seeking. It’s a modular intervention with resources, help and guidance about food and mood – how eating affects lives and what happens when young people experience problems with eating.
We’ve remixed the FREED logo to create a connected identity with it’s own a vibrant attitude, and designed and built a robust mobile app to facilitate the screening, learning and assessment of FREED-M participants. It’s a smart, sophisticated system on the inside with a screenfull of optimistic warmth and simplicity on the outside.
“It was a pleasure to work with Fruitful. Despite our team being London-based, they kept us up-to-date throughout the website design & build process, as well as who our different target audiences would be. They helped us develop a new brand look, logo and resources to match.
The end result is a website that we love. It performs above and beyond our initial hopes and is easy for us to manage - we’ve even received positive feedback from the young people we work with. Thank you!”
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