The Nine States of Design

Here’s a really good ol’ post from way back in 2015 all about the nine states of design and how we should think all the edge cases whenever we’re building interfaces. Vince Speelman writes:

Modern UI teams are designing components first; Interfaces are merely the thoughtful composition of components. This leaves an often glaring hole for users on “the unhappy path” — The places where users may, intentionally or not, stray from your idealized flow. As we learn to craft systems rather than pages, we must invest effort into shaping these often missed states of design and create with a component lifecycle that can support everyone. Here’s the lifecycle as I see it:


  1. Nothing state
  2. Loading
  3. None
  4. One
  5. Some
  6. Too many
  7. Incorrect
  8. Correct
  9. Done

During the design process I think everyone (including me!) tends to focus on the ideal state of a component or interface, often leaving the extremely important edge cases forgotten until the last moment. I think I need to stick this list to my screen so I don’t forget it in my next project.

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