Building a community for diabetic athletes.

The founders of Insulindependence were both Type 1 diabetic athletes. They weren’t approaching diabetes as an abstract cause or building a nonprofit from the outside. They were living it.

And they knew from experience that having Type 1 diabetes didn’t mean giving up the things that made you feel strong, adventurous, competitive, or alive.

They wanted to create a community for other people who felt the same way.

That made this a particularly fun project to work on at Fairway. There was a lot of energy behind the idea and a very real purpose underneath it.

We weren’t really building a website.

Of course, technically, we were.

Our team completely redesigned and built the Insulindependence website. But pretty quickly the interesting question became: How do you design a website that actually helps create a community?

Simply explaining what Insulindependence did wasn’t enough.

People needed ways to join in.

So we started designing participation directly into the experience.

Give people something to go do.

One of my favorite parts of the project was creating challenges for the community.

Instead of treating the site as a place to passively read about healthy living, challenges gave people something tangible to work toward and a reason to come back.

We also designed event experiences where members could discover upcoming activities and sign up to participate.

The website started becoming less of a brochure for the organization and more of an extension of what Insulindependence was trying to create in the real world: people getting out there, doing things together, and pushing themselves.

Then help the community support the community.

Because Insulindependence was a nonprofit, we also needed to make supporting the mission part of the experience.

We created clear ways for people to donate and help fund the programs, challenges, events, and community the founders were building.

It connected the different sides of the organization in one place: learn about the mission, participate in it, or help make more of it possible.

The best projects make you care.

This was one of those projects.

We got to work closely with innovative founders who had taken something deeply personal and turned it into a way to help other people.

Our job was to take that energy and build an experience around it.

The result was more than a redesigned website. It gave Insulindependence a digital place where its community could gather, participate, challenge themselves, show up for events, and help the organization grow.

And it was incredibly rewarding to help build.