Context
IAAPA represents more than 6,000 member organizations in 100+ countries and runs the biggest attractions trade show in the world. The site had grown over the years into a content library with no structure. Members couldn’t reliably find events, resources or membership content, and the CMS was due for replacement. New architecture and a platform migration, at the same time, with an agency doing part of the design.
I was the only UX/UI designer on it, December 2024 to April 2025, managing the outside agency.
Contribution
The architecture came from the content, not the org chart. I inventoried every page, mapped them to the tasks members actually come for, pulled from support requests and search logs, and cut the nav to a handful of top-level sections organized around what a member is trying to do. Departments lost their own top-level entries, and I held that line by showing them the search data.
The call that defined the delivery: build the templates directly in Drupal instead of handing the agency’s comps to a developer. Component fidelity on a CMS migration usually dies in that handoff, so I removed the handoff. It cost me time in the CMS instead of Figma, and a narrower visual range than a pure design pass would’ve given.
Managing the agency meant writing the briefs, running the reviews and owning the approvals, so one person was on the hook for the whole surface.
Outcome
A restructured site and content library on a new CMS for 6,000+ member organizations, with templates built by design rather than reinterpreted by development.
