Three State Solution
Design for regular, blank, and error states
For each screen, you need to consider three possible states:
- Regular
The screen people see when everything's working fine and your app is flush with data. - Blank
The screen people see when using the app for the first time, before data is entered. - Error
The screen people see when something goes wrong.
The regular state is a no-brainer. This is the screen where you'll spend most of your time. But don't forget to invest time on the other states too (see the following essays for more on this).