Stop designing like this

5 UX feedback strategies that saved our project (and will save yours too)

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Hey beautiful human 👋,

Guess what?

Quick personal update… I got married this month! I’m writing this newsletter from the slopes of Niseko, Japan 🇯🇵 I’ll be spending the next 7 days here carving it up, then off to Sapporo to wind down.

Writing this newsletter at a cafe in Niseko

Now I know you didn’t sign up for my personal life goss…

So let’s get back on-topic 😅

My team and I have been working hard on a few major projects.

For one of the projects, we went from failing first user tests to hitting 10/10 scores across the board 🎯

So let me share the exact feedback strategies that helped my designer level up…

If you want to watch the full deep-dive analysis of the points I’m about to share with you, you can watch it on YouTube! There will be visuals which will help you better understand the concepts.

(It’s already clocked in 18k views ✌️)

1. Challenge Requirements

Most designers jump straight into executing requirements without questioning them.

But here's the thing - sometimes requirements need to be challenged if we genuinely want to create great products and level up.

In our project, the client requirements wanted new users to:

• Sign up for an account

• Complete 3 steps about legal documents

• Choose their payment tier

• Sign contracts

• Complete payment during signup

And so our designer followed them.

After running some tests, we noticed the friction this created. I suggested to our designer, why not let companies sign up for free first, then promote premium features once they're actually using the platform?

The goal was to optimise for conversions, not requirements checked.

Once we tested this new optimised flow, participants vouched how seamless and effective it was.

2. Reduce Screen Count

Here's a common trap - we often design flows thinking more screens = more clarity. But actually, more screens = more drop-offs.

Every extra click is another chance for users to abandon your product.

In our initial funnel design, users had to:

• Complete 4 steps

• Land on a summary page

• Click through to a congratulations page

• Click ‘Continue to Dashboard’ to reach their dashboard

We simplified this to land users straight on their dashboard with a notification + confetti. Same impact, way fewer clicks.

Keep in mind, this was just one example of how we reduced a screen. Throughout the entire project, my designer was able to remove ~25% of unnecessary screens and streamline them with simple notifications and interactions.

3. Lower the Barrier

When designing signup flows, it's easy to get caught up in collecting ALL the information upfront. But here's the reality - every extra field reduces your completion rate.

Think about it: if you lose just 10% of users at each step of a 9-step process, by the end you've lost most of your potential users.

Our original company onboarding had 9 mandatory steps. We were essentially building walls between users and our product.

We redesigned it to 5 key steps by:

• Making payment optional

• Moving non-essential info to later

• Only keeping what's legally required for signup

After running various user tests on this, we realised the latter performed significantly better with zero friction points.

4. Visual Branding & Hierarchy

Clean, minimal design is great. But if everything looks the same, users don't know where to focus their attention.

Our first version looked nice but had two major issues:

• It could've been any platform (no distinct branding)

• Users landed on the dashboard with no clear direction where to look

We fixed this by using visual hierarchy to guide users' attention:

• Added branded elements throughout

• Created a proper header structure

• Used a green banner for important notifications

• Added visual reinforcement for completed states

5. User Testing Context

Here's a mistake I see often - we throw users into testing without proper context and then wonder why they seem lost.

It's like dropping someone in the middle of a movie and expecting them to understand the plot.

In our first test, we:

• Dropped users straight into the employees tab

• Asked them to add a member

• Gave zero context about why or what they were doing

The improved version started with clear context:

"You've now set up your company profile, it's time to add an employee to your company.

Step 1: Head to the employee section from your dashboard…"

BTW, I'm turning all these learnings into new educational content. Because that's what gets me excited - learning things in the real world and sharing them with you all 🫶

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Bite-sized learnings

🎭 Imposter syndrome: Throughout my career, I've faced moments where I felt like I didn't belong in certain rooms. Early on, I would overcompensate by talking about my achievements or seeking validation from others.

↳💡 Learning: Overcome imposter syndrome through actions, not words. I've learned that focusing less on verbal validation and more on consistently delivering quality work naturally earns respect. When you let your work speak for itself, people notice. The most powerful antidote to feeling like an imposter isn't talking yourself up—it's showing up and doing the work so well that even your inner critic can't deny your competence.

💰 Financial freedom: I've worked bloody hard over the years. I've burnt out multiple times. I've given up on businesses. I've restarted all over again. Everything has been hard. But those grueling years set me up for where I am today.

↳💡 Learning: You can never make enough, but you should always have more than enough. Working intensively so I have 'more than enough' has brought me so much joy in the later years of my life. Today I am suuuuuuuper grateful for everything. I have the freedom to live life on my own terms. If I had to do it all over again, I would. Financial freedom isn't about having a specific dollar amount—it's about having enough runway to make decisions based on what you want, not what you need.

🧩 Skill stacking: When you hear others preaching ‘you should be stacking skills’, it’s important you understand how do actually do it.

↳💡 Learning: Stop compounding the wrong skills. Many preach the concept of compounding/stacking skills. However, it's important that you are compounding the RIGHT skills the RIGHT way. Many beginners tend to compound various skills before they've even got to a 'reasonably' good level at one. It's like trying to build a house with 100 different half-finished tools instead of 5 complete ones. No point being terrible in 100 skills. You'd rather be reasonably good at 5 relevant ones. This is where leverage happens. Trust me, being 80% good at a few complementary skills will take you further than being 20% good at everything.

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Useful lil' links

• FujiXWeekly - Weekly Fujifilm camera recipes

• Open Alternative - Discover Open Source Alternatives to Popular Software

• Cador - Bluetooth headsets for outdoor sports

• Slopes - Take your snow days to the next level

• FocusedOS - Hide all distractions with one click

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How can I help you?

Here are a few ways I can help you crush your career goals (just like me):

💼 Build confidence in end-to-end UX/UI design (10 hours) - You’ve mastered the tool and UX research and now you want to learn how to lead, design and manage a project end-to-end. Dive deep into every little step alongside me with a real-world project. (500+ designers)

🖥️ Master Figma (10 hours) - Become an expert in Figma so you can get more done; faster and better. This isn’t just a technical course about features, it’s an end-to-end course on how Figma fits into a real-world project. (8,000+ designers)

🔍 Dive-deep into UX Research & Strategy (10 hours) - Learn how to run UX and business research to make more strategic and data-informed decisions for larger scaled projects and improved stakeholder management. (900+ designers)

⚡️Design 10X faster with 8,000+ pre-designed components - We just launched v.2.7.1. If you’re starting every project from scratch, you’re probably wasting a lot of time. Leverage Shipfaster UI to speed up your process dramatically. (4,000+ designers)

🚀 Looking to launch a product? - At More Cursors, my team and I help founders strategise, design and launch world-class products. Feel free to book a call directly with me if this is something you need.

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That's it for this month's newsletter!

I really hope you were able to take away something from it.

Mizko