When waiting is the hardest part
You’ve had a concerning test result. Maybe you found a lump. Now you’re entering a period of chaos — appointments, referrals, phone calls, paperwork. All loaded with incomprehensible medical jargon. And all while waiting to find out if you actually have cancer.
For breast cancer patients, that process averages 100 days. Three months of uncertainty, fear, and logistical headaches. That’s too long.
Defiant Health was built to give patients faster answers and greater peace of mind. Incubated by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and led by a CEO with deep experience in healthcare innovation, Defiant provides clinical support that guides patients through every step of the diagnostic journey: scheduling appointments, interpreting results, and cutting through the confusion.
Instead of 100 days, patients can have answers in a couple of weeks.
The vision was extraordinarily inspiring. But the messaging hadn’t caught up yet.
Finding focus
Defiant came to All Turtles just weeks before their planned launch. They had beautiful web designs in Figma, but full of placeholder copy and lorem ipsum. What messaging they had was from an earlier business plan — it needed a complete overhaul to reflect what was actually launching.
While a content designer from our team focused on structure and removing complexity, I tackled a rebuild of Defiant’s brand voice, messaging framework, and website copy from the ground up. We had to deliver, and we had to do it fast.
Clarity as an act of care
The hardest briefs to fulfill aren’t the most complicated. They’re the ones that punch you in the gut. Because Defiant’s user isn’t an abstract persona in a slide deck. She’s a real person. And she’s scared, confused, and drowning in medical jargon. In that situation, nobody needs cleverness and snappy blurbs. The message must be clear, warm, trustworthy. And instantly understood.
That meant absorbing everything about how Defiant worked and why it was different. Poring through patient research — how it feels to be in limbo, what they want to hear, and what they usually get instead. Then translating everything into relatable language that doesn’t talk down to patients or gloss over the reality of what they face.
The voice had to be warm without being saccharine, expert without being clinical, and direct without being cold. And every line on every page had to earn its place. Defiant had to show the reader that while the outcome may be uncertain, her concerns were heard, understood, and manageable.
Moving quickly, thinking deeply
In just two weeks, we transformed a mass of lorem ipsum into organized, launch-ready content that explained a new concept in health care with clarity and confidence. Defiant had a north star for everything they’d write going forward, and a voice that could meet a patient exactly where she was.
Defiant launched on schedule. But for me, it was more than just another project. It was the kind of high-stakes effort that truly matters.
All of us have either been on a cancer journey ourselves or watched someone we love go through it. And in my professional life, I’ve seen all the ways a project like this can go horribly wrong, when a writer doesn’t care enough, think it through enough, or truly understand the brief. It was an honor to help Defiant get it right.
Project Team
Creative Direction — Brooke Thompson
Visual Design — Nathan Carter
Content Design — LiNa Koh
Defiant Team — Walt Cooper, Red Stewart, Gina Kim
