Designing for Connection: My Work with Highlands North Network

There are some projects that just land in your inbox and change the way you think about your work — and your world.

Working with the Highlands North Network has been one of those projects.

As a web designer and photographer, I’ve collaborated with businesses and organizations across Ontario. But supporting a group of passionate, community-driven volunteers who care deeply about seniors and social health has opened my eyes to the real power of the web: connection.

Designing for Real-Life Impact

When I first partnered with Highlands North Network (HNN), I was asked to help design their website. It was a big task - they were creating a network from the ground up that helped bring together small community halls across the Lanark Highlands to help seniors access programming in the post-COVID landscape. The locations, some hours apart, are all run by volunteers, most of them seniors with limited knowledge of websites or the internet.

But after six months of work, many meetings (and funding from the Lanark Highlands!) we launched the new website for Highlands North Network and put this small organization on the map.

Since then, I’ve had the joy of photographing their events, working with their passionate team to keep their website updated, and help them use tools to promote their programs online — in a way that’s both friendly and accessible to seniors.

From a design perspective, we focused on:

• Clean, legible layouts

• Accessible fonts and navigation

• Simple forms and contact options

• Fun, interactive features — including the now-famous Where’s Harold? game, where visitors search for a hidden image of Harold (a mascot of sorts) to win a prize. It’s a small thing, but it sparks joy and keeps people coming back.

What Is Social Health — and Why Does It Matter?

Working alongside the HNN team has introduced me to the concept of social health — and I now understand how critical it is, especially for seniors living in remote or rural areas.

Their blog posts and programming focus on creating space for people to:

• Connect with others

• Participate in meaningful, low-pressure activities

• Feel seen, valued, and supported

These aren’t just community events — they’re lifelines. And helping get the word out about those events, through blog posts, event photos, and email updates, feels like such meaningful work.

Helping Seniors Navigate the Web

One of the most rewarding parts of this project? Supporting a group of active, tech-curious seniors in learning to update and manage their own content. I’m here to back them up and make sure nothing breaks — but empowering them to use their own website to communicate, publish updates, and showcase photos has been a true highlight. Using Wix has made this possible. It's a user-friendly platform and I've been able to train a few of their administrators to manage aspects of the website themselves.

There’s something really special about watching someone light up as they realize, “I can do this!”

As someone who spends most of their time behind a screen, designing websites and managing content, it’s easy to get caught up in metrics and layouts and deadlines.

But working with Highlands North Network reminds me that at the end of the day, websites are about people. They’re about stories, outreach, and connection.

Helping this group of kind, generous humans reach other kind, generous humans in their community — that’s what this work is all about.

It’s an honour to support them.