Hi designers!
It’s Clément again – welcome to the 10th edition of the CU Design newsletter – a curated set of learnings, inspiration, resources, and tips. This is the final edition of the Spring 2025 semester!
If you’re not familiar with CUxD (Cornell User Experience Design), we’re a centralized community for UI, UX, and product designers at Cornell. We learn and grow together both professionally and socially!
Agenda
CU Design-a-thon
Here are the winners from last week’s CU Design-a-thon!
Congratulations and thank you to all for participating!
Learning time
This week’s topic is about designing great empty states. They’re actually more important than you think!
Most of the time, we focus on how our designs look when content is actually present. But what about if there’s no data yet? Think of a new user’s dashboard, a search with no results, or an error screen. These are all empty states, and they’re a great opportunity to guide, reassure, and engage your users.
Here are a few examples of how to design effective, thoughtful empty states:
Set expectations
When there’s no content, users can feel lost or uncertain. They might also think that the app is broken. Instead of leaving a blank space, use it as an opportunity to explain what’s going on and guide the user on what to do next.
An empty state with a message suggesting the next step for the user
Search with no results
When a user searches and gets no results, it can feel like a dead end. A good empty state here should:
Confirm the search worked (so it doesn’t feel broken)
Explain why there are no results
Offer ways to move forward (eg: resetting filters, broadening the search, suggesting alternatives)
A search with no results, with a message suggesting ways to fix this
Error or downtime
Sometimes, things just break. In these cases, similarly to the search with no results state, a good empty state should:
Acknowledge the issue clearly
Reassure the user that it’ll be fixed soon
Provide a next step, like retrying or contacting support
A loading interface with placeholder elements, and an error message explaining what’s going on
Onboarding or first-time use
First impressions matter a lot. For new users, empty states can serve both as an explanation and as instructions. This is essentially your chance to introduce what the screen is for and how to get started.
Usually, a simple, friendly message paired with a clear call-to-can make the experience feel welcoming to the user.
A setup selection page with a tooltip suggesting first-time users what to do
Learn More
Internship opportunities
California, $40 / hr
Seattle, $21.50 / hr
New Jersey, $25 / hr
Cincinnati, $29 - $50 / hr
Advice from a fellow designer
About
Mika Labadan, IS MPS ’25, from Laguna, Philippines
Fav Figma shortcut
Shift + cmd + R (paste to replace) and Shift + cmd + C (copy as PNG)
Previous work experience
Product Design Intern @ GrowSari, UXD Intern @ Oracle, Incoming UXD @ Oracle. Prev. Designer at DCC and H4I and UXR @ Cornell Social Media Lab
Proudest design project
I’m most proud of the design work I did at GrowSari, where I worked in fast-paced one-week sprints covering UX research, design, and dev handoff. I got to speak directly with users and quickly see the real impact of my work. My biggest achievement was improving click-through rates by over 1000% on an onboarding feature. It was an intense but incredibly rewarding summer where I grew exponentially as a designer.
Advice
Go all in. If something sparks your interest, follow that curiosity obsessively, college is the perfect time to explore. Don’t be afraid to ask for help; some of my best growth came from critique sessions, design reviews, and mock interviews.
Design inspiration
Some cool designs to for your dopamine hit!
That’s all for this week!
Have any feedback or want to see something on the newsletter next week? Email us at [email protected] or reply directly to this email.
See you soon,
Clément @ CUxD