Empty states: the questions we get asked most

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. The questions about empty states that come up most often on our calls.

Design decisions are the ones clients feel most confident arguing about, which makes it worth separating taste from evidence early. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

Do we need to care about this?

The first screen a new user sees is usually empty. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not.

How do we know it is working?

Blank space with no guidance reads as broken. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.

What this looks like day to day

The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. Three things worth confirming about empty states before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• The first screen a new user sees is usually empty — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.