The Screens Nobody Designs

Every product I have worked on had a beautiful happy path in Figma. The dashboard was full of data, the cart had three products in it, and every form was submitted successfully on the first try.

Then the product went live, and real people started meeting the screens we never designed.

The first time a new user opens an app, the dashboard is empty. When the connection drops, something has to appear. When a payment fails, a message has to explain what happened.

An empty screen with “No data yet” tells people nothing. It feels like a dead end, and dead ends make people close the app.

I like to treat every empty state as a small onboarding moment. It should tell people what will appear here, why it matters, and the one action that fills it up.

Most error messages are written by whoever builds the feature, usually at the very end, usually in a hurry. That is how we end up with messages like “Error 402: Transaction failed.” The user does not need the code. They need to know what went wrong and what to do next.

A good error message answers three things in plain language. What happened, whether their money or data is safe, and how to fix it.

Waiting feels longer when nothing tells you what is happening. Skeleton screens, progress steps and small bits of copy like “Pulling your latest orders” make the same three seconds feel shorter.

People are surprisingly patient when they understand what they are waiting for.

These days I add a simple checklist to every screen before handoff. For each one I ask what it looks like empty, what it looks like when it fails, what it looks like while loading, and what it looks like with way too much content.

It adds maybe an hour to the design process and saves weeks of awkward fixes after launch.

They show up exactly when something feels off. Designing them with care is one of the cheapest ways to make a product feel trustworthy.