Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

Solving what problem?

It’s important to think about what problem the first run screen should actually solve. The specific thing the empty screen helps people do, the specific thing people need to do to get up and running with your product, depends on the product.

For a Twitter client, you want people to log into their account. For a travel app, you might want them to enter an flight ID, or give you access to their email, so that you can look for emails with flight IDs. Ask yourself what people need to do in order to get your app into a productive, useful state.

It’s also important to consider that not all empty states are bad. For an email client, an empty inbox might be a desirable situation. You probably still don’t want to just show people ...