{"id":823,"date":"2025-12-08T19:42:55","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T19:42:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amyoukey.com\/blog\/?p=823"},"modified":"2025-12-16T19:52:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T19:52:16","slug":"the-hidden-work-behind-simple-ui-redesigns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amyoukey.com\/blog\/the-hidden-work-behind-simple-ui-redesigns\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hidden Work Behind \u201cSimple\u201d UI Redesigns"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Most people assume a \u201csimple UI redesign\u201d starts the moment you open Figma. In reality, my work starts long before that. The app I support is large, inconsistent, and has no documentation\u2014so the first step isn\u2019t design at all. It\u2019s detective work. I often have to figure out how a section of the product works, why it exists, and who actually uses it. Sometimes even the business doesn\u2019t know who owns a workflow anymore, so I track down the right users, ask them to demo what they do, and reconstruct the actual tasks they rely on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only after I uncover what the screen is supposed<\/em> to do can I redesign it. And because the UI is messy and inconsistent, a lot of the real work is identifying patterns buried across dozens of pages. I map out the screens, compare behaviors, look for common states, and confirm which elements are components versus custom one-offs. I\u2019m not renaming tokens or cleaning up variants\u2014that\u2019s not the setup we use. Instead, I align each redesign to how Telerik\/Kendo (the UI kit the team currently uses) actually behaves, so the final mockups mirror real component logic and developers don\u2019t have to improvise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The visual layer is the last 40% of the job. The first 60% is investigation: understanding the workflow, validating the tasks, correcting inconsistencies, and making sure the design I deliver is grounded in how the product truly functions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tasks during a \u201csimple\u201d redesign:<\/p>\n\n\n\n