Designing for Clarity: OpenSnow Design Interview
Recently, I got to the design challenge stage of interviewing with OpenSnow, a platform that delivers detailed weather forecasts tailored for outdoor enthusiasts. While I ultimately didn’t land the role, the experience was a deep dive into problem-solving around user experience, discoverability, and interface design across mobile and web platforms.
In this post, I walk through the challenge prompts, my approach, and what I learned from the process.
The Design Brief
The challenge was broken into two primary exercises — each with a focus on improving usability and reducing friction in user interaction.
Reimagining the Map Layer Drawer
“Discuss re-design concepts for our map layer drawer. We want to get a sense of how you would adjust the layout of our maps layer drawer... The current design limits discoverability due to the size of the icons and the length of the text.”
In this exercise, I was asked to rethink how users access and interact with a wide array of map layers in the app. The existing design placed these layers in a drawer with three tabs, but the small icons and lengthy labels made it hard to quickly find and enable key layers. The challenge was to make this more intuitive and require fewer taps and less scrolling while improving discoverability of new features.
Simplifying Weather Tabs for Each Location
“Discuss how we can simplify redundant tabs for a location. The Snow Summary, Snow Report, and Weather tabs divide weather data in ways that can hide the most relevant or interesting information.”
This part of the challenge focused on the way weather data is split across three tabs in the location screen. The segmentation made logical sense given the user personas of the brief. However, from a data perspective, it created unnecessary complexity for users who just want to know if it's snowing now or how much has fallen recently.
My Design Approach
The interviewers encouraged candidates to spend as much time as they felt was reasonable given a two week timeframe. I chose to focus on clarity and practicality, aiming to create designs that would have low-lift, and high-impact right away.
Redesigning the Map Layer Drawer
I showed how the interaction would vary across mobile and desktop — prioritizing haptics on mobile, and giving more real estate for filtering.
Group layers into collapsible categories
Use larger toggle chips with both icon + short label for quick recognition
Add a search function for power users
Highlight recently used layers at the top
Consolidate tabs or rethink the base map switcher placement to reduce visual clutter
Consolidating Weather Data Tabs
My solution focused on unifying the three tabs into a single scrollable feed, organized by context and urgency
"At a Glance" at the top: Show current snowfall, conditions, and snow forecast highlights
Followed by detailed sections: Snow Report, Weather Forecast, Historical Stats
Use pinned headers and navigation chips** to allow jumping betwee
This approach ensured that regardless of whether the user cared about current conditions or seasonal data, they’d be able to access it without guessing which tab to tap.
Presentation
Reflection
This challenge was a great reminder that design is less about finding the “perfect” solution and more about understanding users, making trade-offs, and communicating clearly.
Key Takeaways
I received great feedback from my interviewers and walked away with insights about both my designs and process.
Start with structure, not style. Even rough wireframes can make a strong impression if the logic is sound.
Design for context. What works well on desktop might not translate to a mobile tap experience.
Communicate trade-offs. I made sure to explain what I was simplifying and why — sometimes removing a feature is a better experience.
Design is iterative. I would have loved to keep testing and refining, but even in a short timeframe, it’s possible to show direction and value.
While I didn’t end up joining the OpenSnow team, I’m grateful for the opportunity to engage with a real product challenge and contribute ideas to a company whose mission I admire.
