When a screen feels confusing, the instinct is to redesign the screen. Move the button, soften the copy, add a tooltip. Sometimes that works. More often the confusion is downstream of a model that does not match how the business thinks, and no amount of visual tidying will fix it.
A reliable test: try to describe the screen's job in one sentence without using the word 'and'. If you cannot, the screen is carrying two ideas that the underlying model has failed to separate.
Nouns before verbs
Before drawing anything I write down the nouns (the things the business talks about) and the states each one can be in. A booking is requested, matched, confirmed, delivered, disputed or settled. Six states, and suddenly the interface almost designs itself, because every screen is answering a question about one specific state.
The value of doing this on paper is that changing your mind is free. Changing your mind after the migration has run is not.
Changing your mind on paper is free. Changing it after the migration has run is not.
Where the spreadsheets hide
Every business I have worked with has a spreadsheet that nobody mentions in the kickoff meeting. It is where the real model lives: the exceptions, the workarounds, the column called 'notes' that is quietly load-bearing.
Ask for it explicitly. It is usually the single most informative artefact in the entire discovery phase, and it costs nothing to request.
The payoff
Projects that start with the model tend to have quiet middles. Fewer surprises, fewer emergency rescopes, and a design phase that moves quickly because the hard arguments already happened while they were still cheap.
Working on something where this applies? I take on three or four substantial engagements a year. Start a conversation. It costs nothing and usually clarifies more than it takes.
