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 that frustrates people (a confusing checkout, a cluttered app, a signup that makes you give up), diagnose what's actually failing the user, and redesign it to fix THAT. The skill is product judgment: deciding what 'good' means for a real user's problem, committing to a tradeoff (faster checkout might mean fewer options on screen), and defending every change by how it helps, including the boring loading, empty, and error states most designs skip. That's the durable side of design, the part that's about decisions not decoration, and doing one tells you fast whether solving user problems is your kind of work.
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, BuildMe drafts your Common App activity description from what you actually built.
The plan
- 1
Step 1
Pick a screen and name the real problem
Pick a screen or flow that genuinely frustrates people (or a single component, like a signup form, with all its states). Then resist the urge to say 'it's ugly' and instead diagnose what actually FAILS the user: who are they, what are they trying to do, and where exactly does it break? That problem statement is your whole compass.
- 2
Step 1–2
Commit your tradeoff, then redesign
Before you make anything look good, make the real decision: what are you optimizing for, and what will you sacrifice to get it? (Faster checkout might mean fewer options on screen. That's a tradeoff, and owning it is the job.) THEN redesign in Figma. If you use Figma's AI to spin up variants, react to them against your problem and cut the ones that look nicer but don't actually serve it. And handle the states most designs skip: loading, empty, error.
- 3
Step 2–3
Build the before/after and defend every change
Lay your work out as before → after, and annotate each change with the reason it serves the problem: 'I moved X because the user was failing at Y.' If you can't justify a change against the problem, it probably shouldn't be there. This annotated before/after is the artifact that proves you can think, not just decorate.
- 4
Step 3–4
Test it against real people + ship
Show your before/after to 2–3 people, framed by the problem ('here's what was hard, is this better?'), and make one change based on what you learn. No testers handy? Have the AI role-play a skeptical product manager poking holes, just know that's a stand-in, not the real thing. Then publish your Figma link + a short case study.
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