Case study 01 · Mobile app redesign
The designs were ready. The content was not, and nobody could say what should go in it. I proposed a named widget system, each one tied to a business KPI, so both sides finally had something specific to work from.
I was leading the UI design team and we were hitting every milestone. But a lot of the home screen was placeholder: dummy game artwork sitting in a slot meant to bring users back, generic imagery where offers would eventually go. The UX team had no way of knowing what content would actually exist there.
The client’s position was fair. They could not commission content without knowing exactly what each slot needed, and we could not specify the slots without knowing what content was coming. It went back and forth for weeks with nobody wrong and nothing moving.
One of the KPIs the GM brought to that session was upgrades: get customers onto a higher plan for ₹100 more a month. The numbers behind it are what made the stalemate expensive.
5%
110,000 customers
Out of 2.2M customers
01
I invited the GM of marketing to our office for a brainstorming session. Not a review. A working session, so the person who owned the KPIs and the people designing the slots were solving the same problem at the same table.
02
Turned what came out of that session into clear, measurable objectives with the team, so every slot on the home screen had a business job rather than a placeholder image.
03
Instead of placeholders, named widgets: each with a fixed size, a defined content need, and one KPI it existed to serve. Prototyped quickly and put it in front of the stakeholder.
A placeholder says something goes here. A widget says exactly what goes here, how large it is, and which business objective it serves. That was the whole shift, and it came out of the brainstorming session rather than a design review.
Each widget got a name, a fixed size, and one KPI. That turned a vague ask into a precise content brief: not “we need a game image” but “we need a Scratch-and-win, Compact, 64px, headline plus reward.” ACT could commission content before our visuals were final, and we could keep designing without waiting for copy.
Every widget got a name instead of a number. The sizes follow the way Apple names hardware, mini through Max, so a size is a word people can hold in their head rather than a measurement they have to look up.
That sounds cosmetic. It was not. Nobody in a meeting can usefully discuss the 64 pixel card in the third slot, but everyone can discuss a Compact. The engineer knows what to build, the writer knows how much copy fits, and the stakeholder knows what they are approving.
The stakeholder signed off on the widget approach and it became the direction for the app’s home surface.
More usefully, the deadlock broke. Content and design could finally run in parallel, because the widget sizes and slots gave the ACT team a defined shape to write into before any visuals were final.
The library went to engineering as a named set with fixed sizes rather than a folder of one-off screens, which is the part I would do the same way again.
The redesign went on to receive an A’ Design Silver in Interface and Experience Design. Credit to the whole team on that engagement, not just me.
Placeholders were the real problem. They let us keep moving while quietly deferring the hardest question, which is what goes in that space and why anyone would care. I would not design a slot again without naming the content it needs, even at wireframe stage. It feels slower for a week and saves a month.