I redesigned Notion’s empty states without permission. Took me 4 hours on a Saturday. Notion didn’t ask. They probably don’t care. But I learned more in those 4 hours than I did in a month of client work.

This isn’t a pitch. It’s not a teardown. And it’s definitely not spec work.

It’s a reflex. The quiet urge to take something you admire and move a few things around. The compulsion to open Figma at 11 PM because you saw a signup flow that was almost perfect – but not quite.

I do unsolicited redesigns constantly. Not to be clever. Not to show off. But because it’s how I think through product design problems without the constraints of real projects.

This is about why that impulse matters – and what I’ve learned by redesigning other people’s work without asking.

Why Designers Can’t Stop Redesigning Other People’s Products

You know the feeling. You sign up for a product. First click – smooth. Second click – wait, what’s this doing here? Third click – oh no.

Or you admire a clean landing page, but the pricing logic feels like a riddle. Or the dashboard hierarchy feels like someone’s cat walked across the wireframes.

You can’t not see it. And suddenly there’s a screenshot in your Design folder. Then a Figma frame titled “Slack_Redesign_Maybe_v3”. Then you’ve spent your evening redesigning their settings page.

I’ve done this with:

• Notion’s empty states (too text-heavy, not enough visual hierarchy)
• Linear’s onboarding (beautiful but assumes too much context)
• Webflow’s pricing page (three tiers, none clearly better than others)
• Airtable’s permission settings (enterprise feature buried in consumer UI)

None of these companies asked. I wasn’t fishing for client work. I was scratching a design itch.

Here’s why I keep doing it:

1. To practice clarity without politics

Real UX design projects have stakeholders, brand guidelines, technical constraints, and someone who insists the logo needs to be bigger. Unsolicited redesigns have none of that.

You can get weird. Be bold. Prototype the stuff you’d normally water down at slide 17 of a stakeholder meeting.

2. To work with unfamiliar logic

Redesigning something I didn’t build forces me to engage with different problems, different user types, different mental models. It’s like trying on someone else’s design process.

3. To stay sharp between projects

Taste fades if you don’t use it. These redesigns recalibrate my instincts. Like flossing, but for hierarchy and spacing.

4. To build portfolio pieces that show thinking

Design portfolios full of client NDAs are boring. Unsolicited redesigns show how you think when nobody’s watching.

What Unsolicited Product Redesigns Actually Teach You

Redesigning without context is weirdly clarifying. It forces you to:

Make fast assumptions

You don’t know the technical constraints. You don’t know the user research. You don’t know what the stakeholder’s nephew said about the color scheme.

So you strip it down to: What’s the core problem? How would I solve it?

That’s a useful muscle. Most real projects would be better if we asked those questions more often.

Spot your own bad habits

Halfway through mocking Notion’s navigation, I realized my own SaaS product designs had the same problem: too many nested menus, not enough surfaced actions.

Unsolicited redesigns are mirrors. With better button states.

Decide what really matters

When you’re redesigning someone else’s product, you ruthlessly cut what doesn’t matter. No attachment. No “but we already built this” inertia.

Then you look at your own work and realize: I should be this ruthless here too.

Practice explaining your decisions

Building in public means explaining why you made choices. Unsolicited redesigns are practice.

“I moved the CTA above the fold” is lazy. “I moved the CTA above the fold because the pricing page had 8 scrolls before conversion, and heatmaps show 70% of visitors never scroll past screen 3” – that’s thinking.

Even if I don’t have real heatmaps. I’m training myself to think like I do.

The Unofficial Rules of Redesigning Without Permission

I’ve never formalized them, but here’s my code:

Rule 1: Critique the structure, not the surface

I’m not here to fix the color palette (unless it’s actually broken). I’m here to rethink flow, feedback, hierarchy, and what happens when someone actually tries to use the thing.

Surface polish is easy. UX/UI structure is hard.

Rule 2: Respect the intention

Assume someone smart worked on this. Try to understand what they were solving for. What constraints they had. What trade-offs they made.

Then figure out how to make it better anyway.

Rule 3: Stay generous

This is admiration in disguise. If I didn’t like the product, I wouldn’t spend my weekend adjusting padding and rewriting tooltip copy.

Unsolicited redesigns are love letters to products that are close but not quite there.

Rule 4: Know it’s not real work

I’m not shipping this. I don’t need it to scale. I don’t care what the backend stack is. This is for thinking. Not delivery.

Real client work has 17 stakeholders and budget constraints. This has me and Figma.

Rule 5: Don’t be creepy about it

Don’t tag companies on LinkedIn with pixel-perfect redesigns and passive-aggressive captions. Don’t pitch them unless they ask. Don’t act like you did them a favor.

This is for you. Not them.

Real Examples: Products I’ve Redesigned (And What I Learned)

Notion’s Empty States (4 hours)

Original problem: Too much text, not enough visual guidance. New users see walls of gray text and don’t know where to start.

What I changed: Visual hierarchy, fewer words, clearer entry points. One primary action per empty state.

What I learned: Empty states are underrated. They’re the first impression for most features. Treat them like landing pages.

Linear’s Onboarding (3 hours)

Original problem: Assumes you already understand issue tracking. Beautiful UI, but assumes context most new users don’t have.

What I changed: Progressive disclosure. Start with “What problem are you trying to solve?” not “Configure your workflow.”

What I learned: Beautiful design can still have terrible UX design. Polish doesn’t fix unclear purpose.

Webflow’s Pricing Page (2 hours)

Original problem: Three tiers with unclear differentiation. No obvious “best choice.” Pricing logic requires spreadsheet comparison.

What I changed: Clearer tier positioning. One recommended tier. Feature comparison that actually helps decide.

What I learned: Pricing pages fail when they try to be neutral. Pick a hero tier. Make the choice obvious.

When Unsolicited Redesigns Actually Lead to Client Work

Sometimes a product I redesigned ends up emailing me. Not because I showed them. Because I’d already spent time thinking about their product, and when they needed product design help, my name came up.

How this actually happens:

Someone from that company sees my LinkedIn profile. Checks my work. Realizes I’ve thought about products in their space. Reaches out.

Or: I mention in a conversation that I’ve been thinking about their problem space. They ask to see. I already have a prototype.

Or: I write about the patterns I noticed while doing these redesigns. Someone with the same problem finds it.

The creative attention wasn’t wasted. It finds its way back.

How to Use Unsolicited Redesigns in Your Design Portfolio

Most designer portfolios are locked behind NDAs or look identical to everyone else’s. Unsolicited redesigns can differentiate you – if you do them right.

What to include:

Context: Why this product? What problem did you notice?

Process: Show thinking, not just final screens. What did you try? What didn’t work?

Decisions: Explain why you made specific choices. “I moved this because…” not “I made it better.”

Constraints: Acknowledge what you don’t know. “I’m assuming X, but in a real project I’d validate with Y.”

What not to include:

Don’t position it as “fixing” someone’s bad work. Position it as exploration.

Don’t pretend you have context you don’t have. “Here’s how I’d approach this given what I can see.”

Don’t make it your entire portfolio. Mix unsolicited work with real client work.

The best unsolicited redesigns show:

What kind of work you want to do
How you think through problems
Your taste and judgment
Your ability to explain decisions

Redesigning without permission isn’t about being right. It’s about being interested.

It’s a design impulse born from curiosity, care, and maybe a tiny bit of control-freak energy. But mostly? It’s how designers practice when nobody’s watching.

So if you catch me quietly redesigning your empty states or tweaking your mobile nav at 11 PM…

I’m not judging. I’m learning. And probably making my own work better in the process.