When a client says improve the visuals, they almost never mean improve the visuals.
I have heard this so many times. We want to make it look better. Clean up the UX a bit. And every single time, the moment you sit with them and start asking questions, something else shows up. Users are dropping off. The sales team struggles to demo it. The most important feature nobody can find.
The visual is just the thing they could point to. The real problem is usually something nobody has said out loud yet. Your job is to get them there before you open Figma.
Here is how I go about it.
Start with why this is happening right now. Something triggered this conversation. A bad review. A lost deal. A number that dropped. Find that thing. Ask them what made them decide to do this now and not six months ago. That answer almost always has the real problem inside it.
Ask what good looks like, not what the solution looks like. Most clients walk in with a solution already in their head. Redesign this page. Fix the onboarding. And maybe they are right. But before anything else, get them off the solution and back to the outcome. Ask them, if we get this right, what actually changes. For the business. For the people using it. That answer is your real brief.
Use the product before you redesign it. Before you touch anything, use the product like someone trying to get something done. Go through every flow. Not as a designer looking for things to fix. Just as a person trying to complete a task. You will feel exactly where it slows down, where it confuses, where it loses you. That is more honest than any brief the client will give you.
Show them the problem before you show them the solution. This is where most design presentations go wrong. Designer comes back with screens, spends the whole meeting defending decisions. It feels bad for everyone.
Before you show a single frame, show them what you found. Here is what is actually happening. Here is where people are getting stuck. Walk them through it. Let them sit with it.
Then when you open the designs, they are not just screens. They are answers to a problem everyone in the room already agrees on. That is a completely different conversation. And it almost never ends with make it pop.