Interactive design: Please don't ignore the blank state

This article is reproduced from Desiringclicks, the original text titled "Blank State can also play a role." The author talks about the "blank state" that has been overlooked in many products.

The Blank state (Blank Slate), which appears in the dynamic information page when no information has been submitted, is usually shown as "you don't have any photos" You haven't tracked down a friend "etc, but this seems like a very intuitive page design, but it's an important opportunity to talk to users, and a key to inducing users to take the first step and become obsessed with your interesting service or program.

Think about what we usually write on this blank page? The most common is "no news at the moment" or " There are no uploaded photos "and so on, for the user may not have the feeling of disgust, but the first step is always a higher threshold, so a lot of Web services or applications, there will be a lot of users of the ghost State, after the application is no longer no interest, or keep diving only to see the output content, of course, there are a lot of reasons, but we want to is to try to induce them to submit content and thus connect with the service.

So we should not miss this good opportunity, because the blank state of the page is likely to be the last of your users to see the screen, then they will probably never open the service or application.

Renowned design and engineer Nathan Barry in the designing WEB application recommended three blank state information to provide to the user:

Tell the user what data will appear here (What).

Give the user reason why they want to submit content here (Why).

How to submit content (how).

First of all, we have to tell the user clearly, the content of this page will be what information, often see only show a "blank (Empty)" or "no data (NO)" This does not specify the content of the name of the way, that is not what information? What is empty? may be friends, Photos, or travel records, but users can not immediately understand the information form of this page, we should be clear clues to the shape of the content, such as Evernote and Instagram App through the Clear morphological name (tags/friends) Plus the illustration allows us to quickly understand what we're going to be submitting.

In addition to the text and icon commentary, there is another way to quickly let users understand the content of information, is to let them directly experience the real information content, or some sample information, without imagining, such as Evernote Food and Lift the following figure:

After understanding the form of the content of the information, it is best to provide users with a desire to submit content of the impulse or incentive to tell them to use your services and what can be obtained? For example, you can get to know more people and submit labels so you can find the information you need more easily. Or you can contact with customers more convenient and save time and cost, so that users have a purpose and vision (the following image is FreshBooks network services).

Emotional verbal expressions or illustrations can sometimes be useful, such as Vine (pictured below), which makes people want to share something quickly.

Facebook was in the interface to delete user accounts, by adding photos to the words "your friends will miss you", and successfully blocking many netizens who want to delete Facebook accounts, we might be able to use a similar approach like "Your friend is waiting for you to share the message!" Coupled with friends of the picture, to improve the use of the will, the human hair-promoting behavior is often imperceptible but has a significant impact on the behavior and results of the ability!

In the end, we need to provide users with a simple and straightforward way to submit (usually an obvious submission button), why don't we take advantage of the abundant blank state of the page, so that users can directly in the middle of the page to easily click Submit, but only a "no data" text message?

The orange Recording button in the SoundCloud (below) provides a good example. And if your service has a lot of complicated operations, in particular, the use of innovative ways, Nathan also suggested that can be difficult to remember the teaching steps to take apart, rather than at the beginning of the user to make the faint head and remember, as shown in the blank state of the page, when you click on this page, To explain and teach you how to use it.

The blank state is most likely to be seen when the user is first used. They still have a bit of patience with your new product, and we should take this precious opportunity to talk to the user, rather than having the user read the page and actually remain "blank" in the brain.