Designing the Moment
November 06, 2025
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 full redesign of their enterprise platform, our design team felt both thrilled and terrified.
The task was massive — hundreds of screens, workflows that touched everything from data dashboards to billing automations.
I remember that first meeting: 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. Think of it as designing an orchestra — not just one instrument.”
It sounded poetic then.
But a few weeks in, the music started to sound like noise.
Every line, every layout decision felt swallowed by the scale.
We were designing the entire symphony, and no one could hear the melody 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’s this interaction?”
Me: “Just the handoff moment — when the user confirms and sees their data sync in real time.”
Elias: “Then start there. Design that moment. Forget the rest for now.”
03
Designing the Moment
The next morning, I did.
I closed every other tab and stared at that one screen.
I imagined the user waiting for something invisible to happen —
the tension of uncertainty,
the quiet relief when it finally works.
Instead of designing a feature, I designed a feeling.
The subtle pulse of a loading bar.
The tiny delay before a confirmation tick.
The warmth in the tone of success copy.
It became more than UI —
it became a conversation between trust and clarity.
Maya (UX Writer): “This is the first time it feels alive.”
Me: “It’s strange. Once I stopped chasing the whole system, I started seeing 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 Lesson
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.
