MediaNews Group is one of the largest newspaper companies in the US, operating a portfolio of regional news titles including the Denver Post, Mercury News, and others. As UX Design Lead, I led the redesign of the website navigation — a complex, high-stakes project given the scale of the audience and the diversity of publications needing subsite branding functionality.
This project was part of a "Design Thinking in Action" portfolio presentation, showcasing how rigorous research and a structured design thinking process transformed an outdated, disorganised navigation into a modern, flexible system that newsrooms actually wanted to use.
Conducted a System Usability Scale survey to establish a baseline usability score for the existing navigation — providing a measurable benchmark to improve against.
Surveyed subscribers to identify needs, preferences, and demographic information — confirming the audience leaned older and was not highly tech-savvy.
Reviewed GA data including behaviour flow, drop-off rates, and session data to understand how users were actually navigating — and where they were getting lost or leaving.
Identified stakeholders across individual newsrooms to understand what content needs and navigation requirements each publication had at the subsite level.
The redesign needed to serve two very different audiences simultaneously: the end reader (who needed simple, clear navigation) and the newsrooms (who needed flexibility to brand their subsites and accommodate varying numbers of section links).
The key design decisions were:
The redesign needed to serve two very different audiences simultaneously: the end reader (who needed simple, clear navigation) and the newsrooms (who needed flexibility to brand their subsites and accommodate varying numbers of section links).
The key design decisions were:
Following design completion, I facilitated a workshop with the PM team to discuss design epics — converting the design output into a prioritised development backlog. A 2x2 prioritisation matrix (Importance vs. Urgency) was used to align stakeholders on what to build first, next, later, and what to add to the backlog.
Core navigation restructure, subsite branding support, and mobile responsiveness — essential for the redesign to function at all.
Account management utility bar, trending topics component, and weather/date display — high value but not blocking the core navigation launch.
Newsroom-specific customisation features and additional section management tools — valuable but could follow in a subsequent sprint.
Advanced personalisation, regional alerts, and additional contextual components — future enhancements beyond the core redesign scope.
The redesigned navigation was successfully deployed across MediaNews Group's portfolio of publications, giving newsrooms the subsite branding flexibility they needed while delivering a cleaner, more accessible experience to readers. The SUS baseline established in research provided a measurable benchmark for the improvement.