Designing User Experience

Overview

Visual design decides what an interface looks like when everything goes right. UX decides what happens the rest of the time — and the rest of the time is most of the time.

Core principle: Design the states, not the screens. A "screen" is one state of a component; shipping only that one is why generated UI looks finished and breaks on contact with real data.

Companion skills: designing-frontend-interfaces for visual craft, building-accessible-interfaces for access, reviewing-interface-quality to audit a finished UI.

The Iron Law

NO COMPONENT IS DONE UNTIL ITS EMPTY, LOADING, ERROR, AND PARTIAL STATES EXIST

A list that only renders when it has items is not a list component — it is a demo. If the design has no answer for "what does a new user with no data see", the design is incomplete.

Checklist