Microsite · Digital experience
Enhancing the Mighty Hikes Fundraising Experience
Role: Product Designer · Timeline: 2019–2020
Mighty Hikes is one of Macmillan’s flagship fundraising events, where participants hike long-distance routes across the UK to raise money supporting people affected by cancer.
The project focused on the digital experience for improving how participants discover, prepare for, and engage with the event.
Macmillan Cancer Support is one of the UK’s leading charities, supporting millions of people affected by cancer each year.
Mighty Hikes is a nationwide fundraising programme, bringing together thousands of participants across long-distance hiking events, and has raised over £70 million to support cancer services across the UK.
The challenge
The digital experience supporting Mighty Hikes needed to make it easy for users to:
discover upcoming events
understand the challenge and fundraising goals
register and begin fundraising
The experience needed to balance inspirational storytelling with clear calls to action, while ensuring the sign-up journey remained simple and accessible.
My Role
As Lead Product Designer, I was responsible for shaping the user experience for the Mighty Hikes digital journey.
My responsibilities included:
defining the user journey from discovery to registration
designing key interaction flows
collaborating with stakeholders across marketing and product teams
ensuring accessibility and usability across the experience
Understanding the Users
Participants ranged from:
experienced charity fundraisers
people supporting friends or family affected by cancer
first-time participants discovering the event online
The experience needed to support both emotional motivation and practical information about the event.
The Process
The design approach focused on three priorities:
Clarity
Ensure users quickly understand:
what the event involves
how to participate
how fundraising works
Motivation
The experience needed to communicate the impact of fundraising while encouraging participation.
Simplicity
The registration journey needed to minimise friction so users could move easily from interest to sign-up.
The outcome
The work contributed to improving the digital experience supporting one of Macmillan’s major fundraising programmes.
The design helped:
simplify the event discovery journey
provide clearer information about participation and fundraising
support users moving from inspiration to sign-up
key learnings
Designing for charity fundraising requires balancing emotional storytelling with clear and practical user journeys.
This project reinforced the importance of creating experiences that both inspire participation and remove barriers to action.