Google could be saving lives.

Rodrigo Franco
Aug 9, 2017 · 3 min read

On the light of the recent tragic deaths of Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington, both suicides, I started wondering what these people went through in the last moments of their lives and how they could have been helped. Is all the technology that we have in our hands actually doing something meaningful to help people in this situation?

Obviously, the «suicide thematic» has been covered extensively across the web by associations or people that have been in the same situation. However, if you’re an individual in this specific situation you might not know how to get to the result you need.

Try to type on Google search “How to commit suicide?” and “Best ways to die”. The results are straight way answers to what you’ve asked. But should it be this way? Should Google provide quick and short answers like, “Hang yourself”, “Shoot yourself in the head”, “Cheapest, simplest and quickest way to commit suicide?”.

Screen shots of Google results on «suicide». One of the results even has Featured Snippets enabled.

UX Designers often say that we design and think about what our users need but they don’t know.

Did you ever research a persona with suicidal tendencies? Some of you might have done it but did you ever thought on that persona outside of your scope, project or business idea? Did you ever try to help them and target them like you usually do in your daily activity?

Why isn’t Google giving priority to a helpful and life-saving answer?

One solution for this issue is very simple and has been already created. It’s being used on bunch of other stuff by Google, like searching what your IP is, converting euros to US dollars or even searching for emergency numbers based on your location.

Google’s result page when searching for your IP.

Why doesn’t Google use these Featured Snippets modules and display the suicide hotline number as soon as the user lands on the search results? Why not having the information displayed, straight way?

There is even space for a call to action to get on the phone right away.

Search engines have a clear function: to present the user with the most accurate results the fastest way possible. But it is in the loop-holes where the opportunity for creating a life-changing feature exist.

This is neither a rant on Google or a way of minimizing their work. It’s only an honest thought on how we can use our knowledge and technologies to help people in a hard situation.

PS: While writing this article I discovered that in 2015, S.E. Smith wrote a very interesting article on this subject also. Not a technical perspective of the subject but with the same focus. Link here.

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