THE BUSINESS OBJECTIVE
For years, SNO911 operated as the quiet backbone of public safety in Snohomish County—highly effective, deeply collaborative, and steadily innovating, but still largely a “best‑kept secret” outside its immediate partners and responders.
Despite being industry leaders in consolidation, technology modernization, and operational excellence, SNO911’s digital presence didn’t reflect that story. The legacy website was text‑heavy and organizationally focused making it hard for residents, responders, partners, and job seekers to quickly find what they needed or understand just how advanced the system had become.
The goal was to close that gap: transform the SNO911 story from a best‑kept secret into a recognized public safety innovator by building a state‑of‑the‑art website, making their journey to ACE accreditation, their leadership, and ongoing innovation visible, understandable, and actionable for every audience they serve.
The Strategy
The overarching strategy started with “why,” focusing on diverse audience journeys (community, responders, partners, job seekers, governance) so each visitor quickly understands how SNO911 serves them and what to do next.
Visuals and video storytelling provides a look behind the scenes in their new, purpose built facility, and the process, technology and dedication it takes to ‘answer the call’ 24/7. Multiple employees share what’s it like to be a part of this amazing team, reinforcing their culture, commitment to excellence, and their community wide impact.
The Tactics
Delivering Insights and Resources
Content and IA: Prioritized pathways for “Get help now,” AI-powered non‑emergency help, public records, technology projects, and careers, supported by plain‑language FAQs and scenario‑based guidance.
Design and UX: A compact, easy‑to‑scan UI that uses strong visual hierarchy, clear emergency/non‑emergency cues, and always‑visible utilities so stressed users can act quickly while others can explore deeper stories and reports.
Compliance and performance: WCAG‑aligned layouts, ADA and language‑access support, and clearly surfaced statutory/governance content, combined with analytics‑driven navigation and SEO to meet public‑sector requirements and discoverability goals.
Future Ready: A modern, secure, easily editable WordPress platform gives the SNO911 team WYSIWYG control and state‑of‑the‑art content management tools to continuously update, expand, and evolve the site as their services and story grow.
Videos
Stories of Impact
A series of short videos and indepth stories highlight real dispatchers from diverse backgrounds, state-of-the-art workstations, AI copilot tools, and their new, 99,000 square foot purpose built facility showcase the environment, dedication and commitment to excellence needed to be the first, first responders.
Community impact and collaboration: Moments featuring police, fire, and EMS partners underscore countywide coordination and critical importance of the partnership with responders and agencies in keeping the community safe.
The Journey to Excellence
We created the ACE Journey, a 25″ long wall‑scale story showcasing the vision, evolution, dedication and commitment to achieving Accredited Center of Excellence certification.
Strategic Focus
Continuous Innovation
The ACE Journey provides a narrative backbone for the website, making consolidation, innovation, AI adoption, and accreditation feel intentional, community centric and future focused.
Accuracy and authenticity: Illustrations feature incremental milestones reflecting historical eras, current configurations, and SNO911’s actual rooms and equipment, ensuring credibility with internal staff, partner agencies and the public.
Innovation with guardrails: The journey spotlights AI‑powered non‑emergency solutions, hardware/technology evolution and human‑centered protocol milestones, reflecting both SNO911’s partnership with innovative solution providers like Aurelian and its commitment to keeping telecommunicators in the hands of real people.
Community Centric
Access to Everyone
Providing the community with diverse ways to access the help they need is at the heart of how SNO911 serves the community, so we needed to spread the word.
Services include: Text‑to‑911 which lets callers reach 911 silently when a voice call isn’t safe and provides people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have speech disabilities with a direct way to communicate with dispatchers.
Their Nurse Navigation program connects non‑emergency callers with clinical guidance and the right level of care.
Language access and interpreter services, along with TTY, ensure callers can be understood clearly in many languages and with assistive devices.
Shining a light on these services and the value of preparing for an emergency using SMART911 safety profiles help ensure the right services arrive in the right place, at the right time.
Annual Report
Sharing their story of impact
Alongside the new website and ACE Journey wall narrative, SNO911’s Annual Report serves as a third, integrated vehicle for telling the “help starts here” story.
Using clear content strategy, data‑driven messaging, and a visually rich, interactive flipbook/PDF we reinforce how future‑ready investments, shared services, and ACE‑level quality translate into real safety and resilience for Snohomish County.
Deliverables
- Business objectives
- Content strategy
- Future‑ready messaging
- Audience‑centered UX
- Secure Responders portal
- Emergency Incident Feed
- ACE Journey story
- Recruitment Ad
- Recruitment video series
- Rich Visual Library
- 2025 Annual Report
The Results
The new SNO911 digital experience brings their full story into focus in a unified, state-of-the-art website, ACE Journey narrative, fact rich annual report and recruitment‑driven videos and visuals.
We’ve spotlighted this future‑ready 911 team as they lead the industry evolution, while keeping Snohomish County informed and safe today, and in the future.
The clear, concise messaging and audience‑centered website make it easy for residents, responders, partners, and job seekers to understand when and how to get help, when and where it’s needed.
The deatails of their innovative AI‑powered solutions, radio resiliency, future ready facilities and ACE accreditation work together to build trust and confidence that the SNO911 team is ready to ‘answer the call’, and committed to continuously evolving to meet the needs of their growing community.