Empty states, full personality

Overview

The challenge

Empty states are the most overlooked real estate in any product. They often appear when users are at a dead end — a folder with nothing in it, a search that returned nothing, an inbox they’ve never used. Most products treat them as an afterthought: “Nothing here.” Done.

My partners and I had the opportunity to do something different, to use these moments to express a distinct personality while still being genuinely useful. The challenge was knowing when to be playful, and when to just get out of the way.

My role

Writing and illustration direction across eight surfaces

I wrote the copy for each empty state and collaborated with the illustration team on pairing to make sure the visual and verbal voice reinforced each other. Each state needed its own personality calibration based on the user’s emotional context when they land there.

The strategy

Tone as a design decision

Not every empty state should be fun. A user who just searched for an email and found nothing is probably frustrated, so something like a pun would land wrong. But a user landing on their Spam folder for the first time isn’t stressed at all. That’s a moment to spark some delight.

The framework I used: match the tone to the user’s emotional state when they arrive at that screen, not to a blanket brand voice.

To make this framework legible to the whole team, I built a tonal ladder consisting of seven named directions ranging from purely functional to fully voiced, applied across every folder surface in parallel. Named directions included “No frills, no fun,” “Message type + appear here,” “Educational w/subline + CTA,” “More voice, more fun,” and “A happy medium?” Presenting them as a spectrum gave the team a shared vocabulary for the tradeoffs — and made the final direction a deliberate choice rather than a default.

The work

Fifteen states, fifteen tonal decisions

Each entry shows the copy, its context, and the reasoning behind the tone choice.

Process

Exploring before landing

The final states didn’t arrive fully formed. An earlier Oasis exploration phase ran multiple copy directions and illustration styles in parallel across every surface at once — different headlines, different tones, different relationships between text and image. The grid format let the team compare options quickly and make the voice decision as a deliberate, documented choice.

I also collaborated closely with the illustration team on concepts by suggesting imagery, reacting to sketches, and in several cases letting the copy direction generate the illustration idea rather than the other way around. The fishing/phishing joke, for instance, started in the copy and became the visual brief.

Inclusive design

Writing for people who can’t see the illustrations

I also wrote alt text for the Inclusive Design team so that screen reader users could experience something of the illustration’s personality. The goal was to preserve as much of the wit and warmth as possible for users who’d never see the image.

Craft notes

Tonal range as a skill

The most important thing this collection demonstrates isn’t any single line — it’s the range. Spam gets a pun. Trash gets a neighborhood metaphor. Unread gets a small celebration. Search gets nothing but precision. They all come from the same voice system. The discipline is knowing which register to use and why, as well as documenting that reasoning so others can apply it too.

The illustration pairings were content decisions, not coincidences: the fishing/phishing visual joke, the snail-in-a-mirror for Emails to Myself, the raccoon for Trash. Several illustration concepts grew directly from the copy direction. And the alt text brought the same care full circle — making the personality accessible to users who’d never see the images.

Outcomes

What the work achieved

Reflection

What I’d build on