Redesign a Screen That Frustrates People
Maps to: Designer · Product Designer · UX Designer · UI Designer · Design Systems Designer
You're going to take a real screen (one page or view inside an app or website) that frustrates people: a confusing checkout, a cluttered app, a signup that makes you give up. You'll work out what's actually going wrong for the person using it, redesign that screen to fix it, and explain every change by how it helps. The real skill here is judgment: deciding what 'better' actually means for a real person's problem, not just making things look nice. You'll have made a real screen genuinely better, and be able to say exactly why.
You're done when: A before-and-after showing your new version of the screen, or one screen shown in every version it can look like (normal, loading, empty, and when something goes wrong), where every change you made connects back to the problem you wrote down at the start. You can say what you made better and what you gave up on purpose, and why. You handled the boring screens AI-made designs tend to skip. You showed it to at least one real person and heard what they thought, and you put it online. The judgment is the work: not 'it looks nicer,' but 'every change connects back to the problem I wrote down.'
How this shows up on a resume or college app
I redesigned a real product screen against a stated user problem, diagnosing what was failing users, committing to a design tradeoff, and defending every change by how it served the problem (including the loading, empty, and error states most designs skip). I learned that product design is about decisions under a real constraint, not making things pretty, and that 'good' is defined by the user's problem, not taste.
When you finish, Sidequest drafts your Common App activity description from what you actually built.
Not sure yet? Play 5 minutes as a designer first and see how the work feels.
The plan
- 1
Step 1
Pick one screen (one page in the app) and say exactly what's wrong with it
Pick a screen or a set of steps that genuinely frustrates people (or one piece of it, like a signup form). Then resist the urge to say 'it's ugly' and work out what actually GOES WRONG for the person using it: who are they, what are they trying to do, and where do they get confused or stuck? Write that down. It decides every change you make later.
- 2
Step 1-2
Decide which part of the screen you'll give up, then draw it again without it
Before you make anything look good, make the real decision: what are you making better, and what will you give up on purpose to get it? A faster checkout (the screen where someone pays and finishes buying something) might mean fewer choices on screen. That's a tradeoff: choosing to make one thing better on purpose, even though it makes something else a little worse, because it's worth it for the real problem. Owning that choice is the job. THEN make your new version of the screen in Figma (the free design tool where you'll drag boxes and text to build your fix), boring screens included: the screen while it's loading, the screen when there's nothing there yet, and the screen when something goes wrong.
- 3
Step 2-3
Show before and after, and explain every change
Lay your work out as before and after, and write next to each change the reason it helps: 'I moved X because people kept getting stuck at Y.' If you can't tie a change back to the problem, it probably shouldn't be there. This is the thing that proves you can think, not just make things look nice.
- 4
Step 3-4
Try it on real people, then put it online where anyone can look at it
Show your before and after to 2 or 3 people ('here's what was hard, is this better?'), and make one change based on what you learn. Then put your notes online, along with a link to the drawing you made in Figma, somewhere anyone can open it.