Unfortunately I can't see any way to redesign it, and may be forced to use a vba macro to resize merged cells.

It is trying to simulate the feel of a word document. It may have a description above / infront of the box/cell in which to enter text, but unless that text can wordwrap within finite width dimensions (such as in the case of tables) while not being restricted to the width of a single cell when paragraphs of data need to be entered, I dont know what other choice I have aside from the resize macro.

(I found a resize macro for merged cells, but now the problem is I need to be able to protect the sheet while still allowing the cells to change their height. I will start a new post for that question)