UX Research + Web Design
Intermountain Healing Hearts is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting children and adults with congenital heart defects in Utah and the Intermountain West, connecting families with essential resources, education, and support groups.
Intermountain Healing Hearts
UX Research + Web Design
1 Week
Talking & planning
1 Week
Design and build
Loved it
Client reaction on delivery
Here's exactly what changed, and what it meant for the families trying to find them.
✗ Outdated design that didn't match their mission ✗ Community hidden inside a Facebook group ✗ New families searching online couldn't find support ✗ Site didn't reflect their 1,600+ member community ✗ No clear path for a new family to get started
✓ Warm, credible design that matches the org's heart ✓ A real home for the community — not just a redirect ✓ Families can find, join, and get support immediately ✓ Credibility that matches their Primary Children's partnership ✓ Clear entry points: get support, find events, donate
The Full Story
The Problem
Intermountain Healing Hearts has been supporting families of children with congenital heart defects since 2007 — 1,600+ families across Utah and the Intermountain West, in partnership with Primary Children's Hospital. Their community was strong, warm, and deeply needed. Their website wasn't keeping up. Most of their community activity lived inside a Facebook group, which meant families who didn't already know to look for IHH on Facebook often never found them at all. For an organization where finding support can change a family's entire journey through a CHD diagnosis, that gap mattered.
What I was asked to do
As part of a UX design cohort, I helped research, design, and deliver a full website redesign for IHH. The brief was clear: create a site that felt as warm and welcoming as the community itself — one that new families could find through a Google search, land on, and immediately feel like they'd found their people. Week one was entirely research — meeting with the IHH team, understanding their audience, and mapping the journey a newly diagnosed family would take online. Week two was design and delivery.
What I was asked to do
A redesigned site with a visual identity built around warmth, hope, and strength. Community information — what IHH is, how to join, what support is available, upcoming events — brought onto the site itself so families didn't need Facebook to access it. Three clear entry points from the homepage: get support, find events, donate. Trust signals that reflected their 14-year history and hospital partnership. The kind of site a family at 2am, searching for others going through the same thing, would actually stay on.
The result
The IHH team loved it. The site now looks and feels like the community it represents — warm, credible, and accessible. Families can find IHH through Google, understand the mission immediately, and take action without needing to navigate to a Facebook group first. The website finally matches the organization.