Practice for UI designers: design challenges, briefs and community feedback

Step 1

Find tasks with a clear brief

The best practice is a task you didn't write yourself: it teaches you to work with someone else's requirements. Where to find them:

• •community design games: the same brief, a deadline and a vote; Spaceberry Community has run 9 so far;
• •Daily UI: a free series of 100 short challenges sent by email on weekdays;
• •a redesign of a familiar service: take an app you use and write yourself a brief: who it's for, what the goal is, how many screens;
• •volunteer projects for non-profits: a real client and real constraints.

Step 2

Pick a format for the skill

Different formats train different things. Here's what we've seen in community games:

• •a 1–3 screen shot in a week, like the Smart Home game with screens for lighting, climate and security; trains visuals and picking what matters;
• •a redesign of a real product, like Tabletki.ua or the NAOMA website through the eyes of an applicant, a student and a teacher; teaches you to work with existing constraints and information hierarchy;
• •a one-evening team game, like the game where teams of three made a funny landing page; teaches you to agree and split work;
• •a tool challenge, like the AI challenge where the logo, copy and visuals had to be AI-generated;
• •a live battle, like the first battle in Zoom; teaches you to keep pace while people watch.

Step 3

Work to the deadline, not to perfection

The deadline is part of the exercise. Plan your time as soon as you get the brief:

• •spend the first hour sketching several directions rather than polishing one;
• •choose a direction and decide what will definitely be in the final version and what won't;
• •leave time for checks: states, long text, contrast, alignment;
• •submit on time, even if you want to “tweak it a bit more”.

💡 Include a link to your working Figma file: in our games that's how authorship is confirmed, and for you it's a habit of keeping files tidy.

Step 4

Get feedback you can act on

“What do you think?” gets likes, not help. For design critiques, Nielsen Norman Group recommends two things: a clear scope for the conversation and agreed design objectives. So ask specifically:

• •name the task and the user: “this is a payment screen for someone in a hurry”;
• •ask one or two questions: “is it clear what to do next?”, “what catches your eye first?”;
• •listen to the end without defending yourself, write everything down and decide later.

💡 The vote in a design game is feedback too: you see what reads at first glance and what goes unnoticed.

Step 5

Review the result and turn it into a case study

The most useful part starts after the deadline. Look through the other entries and note two or three techniques you want to try. Repeat the same brief a month later and compare. Turn your best work into a case study: the brief, the constraints, your decisions and why you made them. How to do that is in the guide How to build a design portfolio, and more on the game format in Design games as practice.