The Appeal: Information Architecture Redesign

The Problem

A hands-on audit of theappeal.org revealed six distinct structural failures, all pointing at the same root issue: the site is organized around the publication's internal logic rather than how readers actually use it.

The navigation is split across two menus with different content, and neither persists beyond the homepage — leaving users with no path back except the browser's back button. Search is buried inside a hamburger menu, then duplicated at the very bottom of the page, as if someone knew the first placement was wrong but patched it instead of fixing it. On article pages, the topic isn't revealed until the very bottom of the page. And the homepage leads with a full-width newsletter signup before a single story is visible — asking for commitment before offering any value.

Users and Tasks

Rather than redesigning for aesthetics, I anchored the work in three user tasks that a site like The Appeal should support well but currently doesn't:

• Task 1 — Evaluate: "As a first-time visitor, I want to quickly understand what The Appeal covers so I can decide whether it's worth my time."
• Task 2 — Browse: "As a returning reader, I want to browse the latest stories across all topics so I can catch up on recent coverage."
• Task 3 — Search: "As a researcher, I want to search for coverage of a specific topic or case so I can find relevant articles quickly."

Every structural decision in the redesign traces back to one of these three tasks. If a change doesn't serve at least one of them, it doesn't belong in the solution.