Spotlight: Little Heroes League

The medical industry is a complex, complicated web of treatments, information, coordination and insurance. And frankly, it sucks. Add the emotional toll of caring for a loved one — especially a child — and the whole process can break even the strongest person.

That’s where Little Heroes League comes in. Little Heroes League is a care-coordination program embedded in Level 4 NICUs across the country. The organization seeks to relieve some stress from parents by serving as a point person, streamlining care coordination and resources for patients in the thick of complicated and intense medical treatments. They do this by working to advocate for babies, coordinate specialists, help navigate the healthcare system, and organize the maze of care — while also being a source of comfort for families.

(Full disclosure: the organization is inspired by Mallory’s amazing niece, Livia, and run by her family.)

When it comes to building sites, the WOTW approach is all about collaboration. Here, we talk to Little Heroes League founder Will Ulaszek, branding designer Emily Positano, and developer Justin Mabee, to see how they worked to bring the new Little Heroes League site to life.

What the Client Says

Will Ulaszek, Co-founder, Little Heroes League

“Our site was dated, our messaging needed to be simpler and more compelling, and we needed to make it easier to navigate. We also hoped to entice the donor community to prioritize LHL, make it easier for larger donors and hospitals to better understand our mission and value to the community, and encourage our existing donor base with continued progress. Plus, we wanted it to ‘pop’ with more vibrant colors and photos of Little Heroes. 

We actually didn’t go into this seeking to change our brand identity. But the WOTW team convinced us that we needed to do this rebuild from the identity up. We then wanted it to be modern, compelling, and easy to understand. They connected us with a brilliant marketing/branding/messaging firm, Made Better Brands, to build our new messaging. From there, the site construction was pretty flawless and executed in just a few weeks — even with multiple iterations. They were able to guide us toward things the platform did well and stay away from things the platform was less capable managing. They also gave us perspectives on how to manipulate the site on our own when we have updates. The new site is easier to navigate, has better integration, and is easy to manipulate on our own. It was also fine-tuned on the back end with SEO, so it pops up in more web searches. An unexpected plus. 

We love our new site and our community of donors/hospitals/partners love it, too! We can now refer prospective donors and partners to visit our site with pride, knowing that it is a beautiful site that embodies our current messaging and mission.”

What the Designer Says

Emily Positano, Made Better Brands

“Like many of our clients, Brenden and Will approached us after starting a conversation with WOTW about revamping their website. In our experience, a new website build or redesign moment is a golden opportunity for businesses to re-think or strengthen their positioning, brand voice, and how they show up visually. It makes a lot of sense to refresh the brand just before working on the website, so your investment has a long shelf-life and can work as hard as possible for your business.

Brenden and Will were totally open-minded when it came to the brand vision. They knew they needed to elevate the visuals and strengthen messaging, but they left it to us to introduce new possibilities. This is the most exciting thing to hear from a client, because it allows our team to think big, and bring unrestricted creativity and vision to the table.

Our biggest ‘ah-ha!’ came through in a conversation with Meghan, an LHL Inpatient Care Coordinator. She explained that the care coordinator exists with one foot in the hospital’s world, and the other in the baby/family’s world. She offered the visual of a Venn Diagram, placing family in one circle, hospital in the other, and care coordination in the overlap. Meghan’s words illustrated the process, as well as the mission, of the organization perfectly, and directly inspired the new Little Heroes League logo: Two overlapping hearts representing the hospital and the family brought together through care coordination. We also love that together, the shapes can also be seen as a victorious child, arms raised!”

What the Developer Says

Justin Mabee, Week of the Website

“The design was set up by a graphic designer from Made Better Brands. My goal was to get as close to that as possible, while making it easy for the Little Heroes League team to make updates over time. A mobile design wasn’t provided, so throughout the process, I reworked different sections to ensure the design made sense on a mobile device as well as a desktop. 

Fluid Engine made it easy! We were able to have cascading photos of the kids throughout various pages, converted longer scrolling sections into sliders to make it easier to navigate, and even utilized the new Shape Block to have stylish headers at the top of most pages. There were a few little features from the mockups that would have made it harder for the LHL to keep it looking nice, so we decided to scrap them because of the complexity. Instead, I added simple code that allowed for a stretchy line to form under the navigation links, and bolded the links for active pages to make it a bit more interactive instead of static.”