Designing the Moment
November 10, 2025
As a team of designers we wanted to redesign everything — the whole experience, every screen, every flow. But what changed everything wasn’t the big picture. It was one tiny moment that finally made sense.
01
The Project moment
When Weave Systems announced a complete redesign of their enterprise platform, our design team was both excited and terrified.
The project was huge—hundreds of screens, workflows that touched everything from data dashboards to billing automations.
I remember that first meeting well: everyone’s faces half-lit by Figma tabs and caffeine.
Lara (PM): “We’ll start with the end-to-end journey. We need a consistent visual language across the suite.”
Me: “Across all modules?”
Lara: “Yes. It’s like shaping harmony out of pixels — every detail needs to listen to the others.”
It really looked harmonious then.
But after a few weeks, the design started to feel like a mess.
Every line, every layout decision felt swallowed up by the scale.
We designed the entire system - and no one could see the story anymore.
02
The Defining Moment
After another late-night critique, my screen looked like chaos.
Flows connected to flows; but nothing felt right.
That’s when Elias, our design director, walked by my desk.
Elias: “You look like you’re trying to solve the whole world tonight.”
Me: “Feels like it. I can’t tell if any of this even makes sense anymore.”
Elias: “You’re not designing an experience right now — you’re designing exhaustion.”
He paused, then pointed to one small frame buried inside the wall of wires.
Elias: “What are we really designing here?”
Me: “At the confirmation — the sync animation, the real-time update, that tiny pulse of connection.”
Elias: “Then that’s your story. Design that feeling of trust. One true moment can carry the whole experience.”
03
Designing the Moment
The next morning, I start slowly.
I closed all my other tabs and stared at that one screen.
I imagined the user waiting for something invisible to happen- the tension of suspense, the quiet relief when it finally worked.
Instead of designing a function, I designed a feeling. I had a good feeling that we were on the right track.
The subtle pulse of the loading bar. The slight delay before the confirmation click. The warmth in the tone of a successful copy.
It became more than a user interface—it became a conversation between trust and clarity.
Maya (UX writer): “This is the first time it feels alive.”
Me: “It’s really weird. Once I stopped chasing the whole system, I started to see the system differently.”
04
The Ripple
When we presented it, the room went quiet.
That one redesigned interaction — a small, almost invisible moment -
changed how users felt about the entire product.
It became our north star.
We stopped talking about “pages” and started talking about “moments.”
Each designer picked one — the handoff, the error, the success, the wait.
And piece by piece, the product started to breathe again.
05
The Concluson
Complexity doesn’t always need control.
Sometimes, it just needs care - applied to one small, honest interaction that reminds people they matter.
We didn’t redesign the whole platform that quarter. We just designed the moment.
And somehow, that was enough.
Don’t start by fixing everything.
Start by feeling the moment —
because meaning hides inside the smallest moments.
