
Case Study
The American Humane Society, one of the most impactful animal welfare organizations in the world, celebrates extraordinary canines through their annual Hero Dog Awards. This prestigious program attracts thousands of applicants, and millions of voters, honoring exceptional service dogs, military dogs, guide dogs, and other heroic pups who make remarkable contributions to society.
Our team came in to redesign and rebuild the Hero Dog Awards website, which had become visually outdated and functionally unreliable, faltering at critical moments. We created a modern new design language to serve as a backbone for the platform, and architected it to easily handle massive traffic surges, even at peak voting times. Additionally, we engineered a complex voting system that meets strict compliance, security, and legal requirements.
We built the system to last, empowering the American Humane digital team to update and repurpose it every year for their annual Hero Dog competition.
- Robust user voting functionality allows for comprehensive data audits and forensics.
- Built using React + headless WordPress to meet extreme performance demands.
- Thousands of heroic dogs celebrated throughout the years.

An entirely new look and feel helped modernize the Hero Dog Awards. The UI was designed to allow users to easily filter and narrow down the hundreds of finalists each year.
The website was created using a mobile-first approach, giving users access to the full voting functionality from anywhere. The headless WordPress infrastructure means the site loads quickly, even when cell reception is spotty.
