--- title: "Thought leader series: Turn empty states in your mobile app design into bold brand experiences" description: Empty states in mobile app design are brand opportunities. Learn how to use them to guide users, build trust and deepen emotional connection. image: https://weareaffective.com/hubfs/learning-centre-images/thought-leader-series-turn-empty-states-in-your-mobile-app-design-into-bold-brand-experiences.webp --- [Skip to content](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/thought-leader-series-turn-empty-states-in-your-mobile-app-design-into-bold-bran#main-content) [![we\_are\_affective\_logo\_200](https://weareaffective.com/hs-fs/hubfs/we_are_affective_logo_200.png?width=175&height=48&name=we_are_affective_logo_200.png "we_are_affective_logo_200")](https://weareaffective.com) - [Home](https://weareaffective.com) - About Us - [Our Story](https://weareaffective.com/about) - [How We Work](https://weareaffective.com/how-we-work) - Our Services - [App Planning & Strategy](https://weareaffective.com/app-planning-strategy) - [App Design](https://weareaffective.com/app-design-agency) - [App UX Design](https://weareaffective.com/app-ux-design) - [App UI Design](https://weareaffective.com/app-ui-design) - [App Technical Architecture](https://weareaffective.com/app-architecture) - [Existing App Audits](https://weareaffective.com/app-audit) - [Case Studies](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies) - [Pricing](https://weareaffective.com/pricing) - [Learning Centre](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre) - [Get Started](https://weareaffective.com/get-started) Expert Guide Series # Thought leader series: Turn empty states in your mobile app design into bold brand experiences Table of Contents The screen is empty. No content, no list items, no saved favourites, no history. Just a blank space where something should be. For the typical team, this is a gap to fill as quickly as possible, a state to design around rather than design for. But that blank screen is one of the few moments in a mobile app where the user has stopped, where there is nothing competing for their attention, and where the brand has the full frame to itself. > An empty state is part of the experience, and it arrives at some of the most emotionally loaded moments in the user journey. Empty states arrive at every stage of a user's journey. The first time they open an app and nothing has been added yet. The moment after they clear their history. The search that returns no results. The inbox that has been fully processed. Each of these is a real moment in a real person's experience of a product, and most products treat them identically: a grey illustration, a two-word label, maybe a button. The visual equivalent of a shrug. What we have seen, across apps in wellness, fitness, beauty, and hospitality, is that the teams who treat empty states as brand moments consistently produce more coherent products. The teams who treat them as edge cases produce experiences that feel inconsistent even when the user cannot say why. That inconsistency is a trust problem, and it compounds over time. ## What Empty States Actually Are (And Why They Appear More Than You Think) An empty state is any screen or component in a mobile app that has no content to display. That sounds narrow, but the conditions that produce one are surprisingly varied. A new user who has not yet added anything. A returning user whose data has been cleared. A search with no matching results. A feed that has been fully viewed. An error that could not load the content. A notification centre with nothing pending. Each of these is a distinct situation, and each one places the user in a different emotional state. The instinct is to assume empty states are rare. In practice, [every new user sees them on their first session](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/what-curiosity-looks-like-in-a-first-session-and-why-most-products-design-past-i), and returning users encounter them whenever they outpace the content or hit a boundary in the product. They are structural features of how apps work, and they appear reliably at the moments when a user is forming their first impression or reconsidering whether the product is worth continuing with. There are three broad types worth separating out clearly. - First-use empty states, where nothing has been added yet and the user is orienting themselves - User-cleared empty states, where the user has deliberately emptied something and is waiting to see what comes next - Error or no-results states, where the product has failed to return what was expected Each type demands a different response. Lumping them together and applying a single template is where most design systems go wrong, producing responses that are tonally wrong for the situation even if they are visually consistent. ## The Cost of Treating Empty States as Afterthoughts Design teams tend to build empty states last. The core flows get the attention, the edge cases get a ticket at the end of the sprint, and empty states land somewhere between the two: not urgent enough to prioritise, not invisible enough to ignore entirely. The result is states that are functional but emotionally flat, states that communicate nothing about what the brand is or what the user should feel. The cost of that is not abstract. A user who opens an app for the first time and sees a blank screen with a small grey icon and the words "Nothing here yet" has learned something about the product. They have learned that the product does not anticipate them, does not have anything to say to them, and has not considered what this moment feels like. That impression forms in seconds and it does not reset easily. According to [Localytics (Upland Software)](https://uplandsoftware.com/localytics/resources/blog/25-of-users-abandon-apps-after-one-use/), 25% of mobile apps are abandoned after a single use. Empty states are not the only driver of that figure, but they concentrate at exactly the moments when a first-time user is most uncertain and most likely to leave. We worked on a mobile [app in the health and wellness genetics sector](https://weareaffective.com/app-ui-design) where the gap between the brand promise and the product experience was doing real damage. The packaging and online presence were luxurious and aspirational, built around transformation and reaching your full potential. The app itself was cold and clinical. When users moved from the aspirational marketing through to opening the app to see their results, the experience broke down entirely at the product touchpoint. Empty loading states, result screens with no warmth, nothing that carried the emotional register of the brand they had bought into. ## UX/UI design built around *real* psychology We design app interfaces around how people actually think and behave. User research, psychology-driven UX/UI design and technical specs delivered as one complete package. [See how we work](https://weareaffective.com/how-we-work) [Get started](https://weareaffective.com/get-started) No commitment ## What a Brand Moment in an Empty State Actually Looks Like A brand moment in an empty state is a response that reflects what the brand actually is, calibrated to what the user is feeling in that moment. That is a higher bar than the average team sets for itself, and it is the bar that separates products that feel coherent from ones that feel assembled. The Headspace opening screen is a useful reference point. A single call to action, a simple illustrated character, no login wall and no goal-picking step. The implicit promise is that the experience is light, non-clinical, the beginning of a friendly new habit rather than entry into something demanding. That framing earns trust immediately because it signals accessibility before the user has committed anything. The interface is being calm at the user rather than instructing them to become calm, and the user mirrors that state without being asked to. > Headspace's illustrated character does the emotional work that copy typically tries and usually fails to do. The choice to use illustration rather than photography in Headspace is worth examining directly. A photograph of a serene person sets a real-world standard the user may feel they are failing to meet. An illustrated cartoon character implies nothing about the user's own state or adequacy. Most teardowns of wellbeing apps focus on copy and language and move past the fact that the artistic style of the visual assets is itself carrying a significant portion of the trust-building work. The same logic applies to empty states: the visual register of the state communicates before any copy is read. Before designing an empty state, write down what the user is feeling in that moment, not what they need to do next. The emotional read should come before the functional one, or the state will be designed for the product's needs rather than the user's. ## Matching Empty State Design to the User's Emotional State The user's emotional state when they encounter an empty state is not the same across all situations. A user who has just opened a fitness app for the first time is curious and slightly uncertain. A [user who ran a search and got no results](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/5-user-testing-methods-that-will-save-your-app-from-failure) is mildly frustrated. A user whose app failed to load is anxious or irritated. Treating these three states with the same visual template is a category error, and it produces responses that feel tonally wrong even when the user cannot articulate why. The practical question is what the user needs at that moment to move forward. In high-stress or high-anxiety situations, the answer is simplification and reassurance. In curiosity states, the answer is orientation and a clear first step. In frustration states, the answer is acknowledgement and a direct path out. None of these maps onto a single empty-state template. On the fitness app we worked on, one of the changes that had a clear effect on early retention was framing. Before orientation questions were shown, we added a simple indication of how long they would take. That [small adjustment meant users entered the process](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/why-product-owners-should-write-the-users-second-session-before-the-first-one) in a more prepared emotional state rather than an uncertain one. The content had not changed. The emotional context for encountering it had, and that changed how it landed. Map the empty states in your app against the three types: first-use, user-cleared, and error. Then write one sentence for each describing the user's most likely emotional state. If that sentence does not match the tone of the current design, the design is wrong for the moment even if it is visually polished. ## When the Brand Promise and the Product Experience Contradict Each Other The genetics app project is a clear example of what happens when a brand builds a strong emotional promise at the marketing layer and then fails to carry it through into the product. The promise was transformation and luxury. The product experience was cold and functional. Users who had moved through the full journey, from discovery to purchase to testing to opening the app, arrived at the result screen to find something that felt like it belonged to a different company entirely. Empty states are where this contradiction is often sharpest. The marketing materials can be warm, aspirational, and personal. But the first time a user opens the app and sees nothing yet, or the moment their results are loading, or the screen that appears when a feature has no content, these are the moments where the actual [emotional register of the product is revealed](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/a-guide-to-auditing-emotional-consistency-across-a-product-brand-and-marketing-s). If those states were designed by someone who did not know the brand, they will contradict it. The fix is not to add the brand colour and a friendly illustration to the empty state template. It is to build empty states from the same brief that was used to build the brand, so that the emotional register is consistent rather than applied as a surface layer. A wellness brand that talks about care and gentleness in its packaging should feel the same way when a search returns no results. A fitness brand that talks about energy and progress should feel the same way when the user's history is empty on day one. Pull up your brand personality document and your app's empty states side by side. If someone could look at both and not connect them to the same company, the empty states are doing active damage to the brand rather than reinforcing it. ## Using Emotional Arcs to Design Empty States Intentionally One of the artefacts we produce from a research debrief is a document mapping the [emotional arc of users through a product](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/how-to-read-a-user-session-recording-for-emotional-signal-rather-than-task-compl). It captures how users feel at each stage of their journey through a feature, and we use it alongside a brand personality document to check that whatever is built next is emotionally coherent, not just functionally justified. Empty states need to appear on that arc as deliberately as onboarding screens or checkout flows. The emotional arc for a first-use empty state usually looks like this: a user arrives curious but slightly uncertain, they see nothing in the space they expected to find something, they need enough orientation to know what to do next without feeling overwhelmed, and they need enough [warmth to feel the product is on their side](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/why-do-some-apps-feel-like-they-were-made-just-for-you) rather than neutral about their presence. That arc points to specific design decisions: a welcoming visual register, a clear single action, no information overload, and a tone that matches where the user is rather than where the product wants them to be. | Empty state type | Likely emotional state | Design priority | | --- | --- | --- | | First use | Curious, uncertain | Orientation, warmth, single clear action | | User-cleared | Neutral, expectant | Acknowledgement, forward momentum | | No results | Mildly frustrated | Direct acknowledgement, alternative path | | Error or failure | Anxious, irritated | Clarity on what happened, reassurance, next step | When the emotional arc is built before the design, the resulting states feel considered rather than assembled. When it is skipped, the states tend to be copies of each other, carrying the same tone regardless of what the user actually needs at that point in the journey. ## Empty States Across the User Journey: First Use, Return Use, and Error A first-use empty state and a return-use empty state are not the same design problem, and treating them as such produces states that are wrong for one of the two situations. First-use states are introductions. The user does not yet know what the product can do for them, and the empty state is often the first real signal of what kind of product this is going to be. Return-use states appear after a user has cleared something or reached a boundary, and those users already understand the product. They do not need orientation. They need acknowledgement and a path forward. Error states are a different category again. Poor offline or error UX is characterised by apps that fail silently, providing no indication of what is happening, no cached fallbacks, just a blank screen with a loading spinner or sometimes nothing at all. That experience leaves users looking at the screen wondering why there is no data showing, which is the opposite of what a gracefully degraded experience does. An error empty state that explains what happened and offers a clear next step is doing something meaningful. A spinner with nothing else is just absence. The concierge app we built for residents moving into a new block of flats gave us a clear view of how emotional state varies across these moments. Some residents were moving into their first property. Others were moving following a separation. The emotional range was wide, and the empty states they encountered on first use needed to be warm and unburdening rather than information-dense. We chose to [drip-feed content over time, matching what appeared](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/what-a-development-team-actually-needs-to-know-about-the-user-before-sprint-one) to when users would actually need it, rather than surfacing the full building directory immediately. ## Practical Principles for Turning Empty States into Brand Assets The shift from afterthought to brand asset requires a change in when empty states enter the design process, not just how they look when they do. If empty states are designed at the end of a sprint to fill a gap, they will always feel like gap-filling. If they are scoped alongside the core flows, they get the same strategic consideration and tend to reflect it. A few principles guide this well in practice. 1. Define the emotional state first. Before any visual decision, name what the user is most likely feeling when they encounter this state. That becomes the design brief, not the visual template. 2. Match the tone to the brand, not to a generic empty-state convention. A playful fashion app and a serious health app should have empty states that feel as different as their onboarding screens. 3. Give the user one clear action. Empty states that offer three options or no options are both wrong. One action, clearly stated, moves the user forward without adding [cognitive load at a moment when they are already](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/10-micro-interactions-that-will-transform-your-apps-user-experience) slightly uncertain. 4. Treat error states as distinct from first-use states. They need different copy, different tone, and a different visual register because the user's emotional state is different. 5. Review empty states against the brand personality document before shipping. If they do not read as part of the same product, they need another pass. The 95% of decisions driven by emotional rather than rational processing, cited by [Ecxo](https://ecxo.org/the-role-of-emotions-in-cx-and-how-you-can-use-them-to-design-better-experiences/), does not pause when a screen is empty. The user is still forming a feeling about the product, and an empty state that communicates nothing contributes to that feeling as surely as one that communicates something well. ## Conclusion Empty states are not the problem. Designing them without intention is. Every blank screen in a mobile app is a moment where the user has stopped, where the product has nothing competing for attention, and where the brand has a clear opportunity to be itself rather than simply absent. That opportunity is wasted more often than it is taken, and the effect accumulates across every session. The genetics app project showed what happens when brand promise and product experience are built separately and then joined at the end. The concierge app project showed how emotional state at the point of first use should shape what the product offers rather than what the product has available to show. The fitness app project showed how framing a single moment differently can change how a user enters an experience. In each case, the design decision that mattered was made before the visual work began, at the point of asking what the user is feeling and what the brand should be saying at this moment. Empty states designed from that question look and feel different from ones designed to fill a gap. They carry the brand's register into the moments that are easiest to overlook. And because those moments are often the first or the most uncertain ones in the user's journey, getting them right has an effect that extends well beyond the screen itself. If your app's empty states feel like a different product from your brand, or if they have never been designed with the user's emotional state in mind, that is a gap worth addressing deliberately. [Let's talk about your app's empty states](https://weareaffective.com/get-started) and work out where the brand experience is going missing. ## Frequently Asked Questions What exactly is an empty state in a mobile app? An empty state is any screen or component in a mobile app that has no content to display. This can happen in a variety of situations, including when a new user has not yet added anything, when a search returns no results, or when a notification centre has nothing pending. How often do users actually encounter empty states? Empty states are far more common than most design teams assume. Every new user sees them during their first session, and returning users encounter them whenever they outpace the content or reach a boundary within the product. Why do most design teams get empty states wrong? Empty states are typically built last, after the core flows have received the most attention, leaving them functional but emotionally flat. The result is states that communicate nothing meaningful about the brand or what the user should feel in that moment. Are all empty states the same, and should they be designed the same way? No, there are three distinct types: first-use states, user-cleared states, and error or no-results states. Each places the user in a different emotional situation, so applying a single template across all three will produce responses that feel tonally wrong even if they look visually consistent. What is the real cost of treating empty states as an afterthought? When a user opens an app for the first time and sees a blank screen with a generic message, they immediately form an impression of the product and the brand behind it. That impression compounds over time and becomes a trust problem that is difficult to reverse. How can empty states become a positive brand moment? Because empty states arrive when there is nothing else competing for the user's attention, they give the brand the full screen to itself. Teams who treat these moments as deliberate brand opportunities consistently produce more coherent and trustworthy products than those who treat them as edge cases. Which industries benefit most from designing better empty states? The article highlights wellness, fitness, beauty, and hospitality as areas where thoughtful empty state design has made a measurable difference. However, the principle applies to any app where users form emotional connections with the product. What is the simplest first step a design team can take to improve their empty states? The most practical starting point is to identify and separate the different types of empty states within the product, rather than grouping them together under one generic template. From there, each type can be designed with a tone and message that fits the specific emotional moment the user is experiencing. ## Related Articles [![We Are Affective](https://weareaffective.com/hubfs/we_are_affective_logo_mark.svg)](https://weareaffective.com) 20-22 Wenlock Road London, N1 7GU United Kingdom +44 20 4572 8062 [hello@weareaffective.com](mailto:hello@weareaffective.com) Services [App planning & strategy](https://weareaffective.com/app-planning-strategy) [App design](https://weareaffective.com/app-design-agency) [App UX design](https://weareaffective.com/app-ux-design) [App UI design](https://weareaffective.com/app-ui-design) [App technical architecture](https://weareaffective.com/app-architecture) [Existing app audits](https://weareaffective.com/app-audit) Legal [Privacy policy](https://app.termly.io/policy-viewer/policy.html?policyUUID=b8fa9921-7518-4fb5-8ddd-9dc7f5977ed2) [Terms](https://app.termly.io/policy-viewer/policy.html?policyUUID=8b6a6ad5-91bd-4176-a5f7-6d36b0398f70) Case studies [TravAI](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/travai) [Meditech](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/harley) [WorkingWeight](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/workingweight) [SkinSync](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/skinsync) [Three Lochs](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/three-lochs) [Drift](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies/drift) About us [Our Story](https://weareaffective.com/about) [How We Work](https://weareaffective.com/how-we-work) Guides [Creating an app](https://weareaffective.com/how-to-create-an-app) [Building an MVP](https://weareaffective.com/building-an-mvp) [Cost and budgeting](https://weareaffective.com/app-development-cost) [App technology](https://weareaffective.com/app-development) [Planning and strategy](https://weareaffective.com/app-planning-strategy) [User research](https://weareaffective.com/app-user-research) [Onboarding design](https://weareaffective.com/app-onboarding-design) [User psychology](https://weareaffective.com/user-psychology-app-design) [Launch and growth](https://weareaffective.com/app-launch-growth) Copyright © 2026, weareaffective.com. 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