Most founders try to win by adding more. More buttons. More settings. More power. The result is a busy product that hides value in plain sight. New users feel lost. They click around, stall out, and leave. The fix is not to remove value. The fix is to control how and when value shows up.
The principle is progressive disclosure. Show the next step only when the user needs it. Keep the main job to be done front and center. Tuck advanced options into clear places. Give simple ways to learn more without breaking flow. Done right, your product feels lighter and smarter at the same time. You are not dumbing it down. You are guiding attention.
Our audit starts with three simple passes. First, clarity. On each key screen, is the main action obvious in two seconds. Second, hierarchy. Are secondary actions grouped and named by task, or scattered across the UI. Third, learning. Do empty states, tooltips, and defaults teach the next step, or do they leave people to guess. From this we create a short list of changes you can ship fast. Labels, layout, defaults, and one high impact screen to refactor.
Here is a quick story. A team had a strong analytics product, but the toolbar looked like a cockpit. New trials stalled. We mapped the jobs to be done and moved the core action into a bright “Start here” button. We put advanced filters in a tidy drawer with plain labels. We turned saved views into presets the user could select in one click. Support tickets dropped. Trials moved forward. The product felt calmer without losing power.
Client words say it best:
“Bal helped us stop trying to show everything at once. After the audit, our product felt simple. Our team knew what to build next.” — Dylan Ander, Founder, Heatmap
What you will get from this step is focus. A shared language for decisions. A fast plan your team can ship without a full redesign. This sets the base for Step 2, where we explore the future state and design modular pieces that scale.
If that matches what you want, the next move is easy. We run the audit on your top two screens, meet for a short readout, and pick three changes to ship this month.