Empty States

The framing comes from Torrey Podmajersky's work on UX content design. She treats an empty state not as an absence of content but as a designed communication — one of the most common, and most neglected, moments a new user encounters.

Empty states are the most neglected touchpoint in digital product design — they're the moments when nothing has happened yet, and they are statistically among the most common experiences for new users. Podmajersky's framework treats the empty state not as an absence of content but as a designed communication: what does this space mean, what goes here, and what should the user do now? There are three distinct empty state types — first-use (help the user understand how to begin), user-action required (show what the user must do to populate this view), and no results (explain clearly and offer a path forward). Each demands a different response. The absence of any design for these states is not neutral — it produces confusion and abandonment at exactly the moment a new user is most vulnerable.

Empty states are where new users live. Before they've added any data, every screen is empty — so these 'nothing here yet' moments are statistically among the most common a newcomer sees, and leaving them blank strands the user exactly when they're most vulnerable.

There are three distinct kinds, each needing a different response: first-use (help the user understand how to begin), user-action-required (show what they must do to fill this view), and no-results (explain clearly and offer a way forward). Treating the empty space as a designed message — what is this, what goes here, what do I do now — turns a dead-end into an on-ramp.

An empty state is any screen or component that has no data in it yet — and it's one of the most neglected touchpoints in product design. Torrey Podmajersky reframes it: an empty state isn't an absence of content but a designed communication, one that should answer three questions — what does this space mean, what goes here, and what should the user do now?

These moments matter more than they seem, because they're where new users spend their first minutes. Before anyone has added data, every screen is empty, so 'nothing here yet' is statistically one of the most common experiences a newcomer has — and exactly the point at which they're most likely to get lost and give up.

Podmajersky identifies three distinct types, each needing its own response. First-use states help the user understand how to begin; user-action-required states show what they must do to populate the view; no-results states explain clearly and offer a path forward. The absence of any design for these states isn't neutral — it produces confusion and abandonment at the most vulnerable moment. It connects to progressive onboarding and self-evident design.

Empty states only appear under specific conditions — a new account, an empty list, a search with no results — which a static review of a populated page may not reach. Kweri can flag the likely existence of empty states (lists, dashboards, search results) and prompt you to design them deliberately for each of the three types. What it often can't do without reaching those states is see whether they're handled well or left blank, since they're conditional. So Kweri raises empty states as a touchpoint to check and design, while confirming how each one looks means triggering the empty condition.

Identified by Torrey Podmajersky. Catalogued from Strategic Writing for UX (Torrey Podmajersky).

From Podmajersky's framework for UX content design; there's no single canonical web source.