Empty States

Every system in the study uses this pattern at least once, making it the only visual approach with 100% adoption across all 10 products. GitHub relies on it most heavily (7 of 14 instances), followed by Stripe (7 of 13). The core component stack is consistent: a 48-64px monochrome icon, a 3-5 word headline, optional body text, and a primary CTA button with an imperative verb.

The second most common pattern strips away all visual elements. Twenty-eight instances across all 10 systems use nothing but text. Half of these have no CTA either, because the surrounding UI provides enough guidance. This pattern dominates in data tables (75% of table contexts), completion states (60%), and filtered results (30%), where column headers, filter bars, or tab navigation already frame the empty space.

Illustrations appear in 20 of 119 instances (17%), but their distribution reveals a sharp divide. Asana uses illustrations in 5 instances, Atlassian in 4, and Slack in 1 — all for onboarding or feature discovery. Technical systems reserve them for narrow cases: Linear only in educational contexts (4 instances), GitHub only for completion states (2 instances). Notion and Retool use zero illustrations across all their empty states. Illustrations cluster around onboarding (60% of illustration instances), messaging features (67%), and files/attachments (100%), but never appear in settings, search, or filtered results.

Twenty-one instances live inside modals, drawers, and overlays — every system has at least one. These range from search dropdowns showing "No results" (Stripe, Airtable, Notion) to full creation forms that serve as the empty state itself (Linear's new-project modal, Retool's create-agent dialog). Modal empty states follow different rules than page-level patterns: headlines trend shorter, body text is often omitted entirely, and inline links replace buttons for secondary actions. Stripe's search overlay uses just "No search results found" with an inline link to the support site. The pattern matters because it's often invisible in design system audits — teams build page-level empty states but forget the overlays.

Seven instances use the grid or table structure itself as the empty state. Airtable shows column headers with empty numbered rows. Notion displays a "Name" header with a "+ New page" placeholder row. Atlassian's board view shows TO DO, IN PROGRESS, IN REVIEW, and DONE columns with an inline "What needs to be done?" input. No centered message, no icon. The structure communicates both what the view is and how to start using it.

First-use onboarding is the most common empty state context, accounting for 45% of all 119 instances across all 10 systems. But the pattern you choose should be driven by product type, not by the fact that it is a first-use state. Technical systems like Linear, GitHub, and Retool default to neutral icon-headline-cta, while collaboration tools like Asana, Slack, and Atlassian lean toward illustrations with encouraging tone (27% of all instances use encouraging tone).

Search is the one context where all systems agree. Across 15% of all instances (the search/filter category), tone is universally neutral. No system uses encouraging or celebratory copy when a search returns nothing. The pattern is minimal: icon + text or text-only. Headlines stay short at 2-4 words ("No results", "No results found", "Nothing turned up"). Half of search empty states include no CTA at all; the rest offer "Clear filters" or recovery hints like "Try adjusting your search filters." Encouragement reads as patronizing when users are mid-task and potentially frustrated.

Dashboard-zero is an underused pattern. Only 4 of 10 systems (Asana, Atlassian, Retool, Stripe) render zero-value charts and metrics rather than hiding them, accounting for 9 instances (8% of the total). But every dashboard empty state that does appear maintains its full layout — metric cards, chart axes, table headers — with zero values rather than replacing the structure with a centered message. Stripe Express shows "NOK 0.00" earnings with chart axes and column headers visible. Asana renders all four metric cards at zero with empty charts below. No system that shows a dashboard hides its structure.

Overall, 81 of 119 instances (68%) use neutral tone, 32 (27%) use encouraging tone, and just 6 (5%) use celebratory tone. Those 6 celebratory instances all share one context: inbox or notification zero-states. GitHub uses "All caught up!", Asana uses "Hooray, you're up to date!", Slack uses "You're all caught up", and Stripe uses "You're all up to date." They appear across 5 systems: Asana, GitHub, Linear, Slack, and Stripe. No exceptions exist in the study — celebratory tone never appears outside completion states. Fake celebration on states the user didn't work toward erodes trust.

Under 3 words feels abrupt. Over 6 gets skimmed. The sweet spot across all 10 systems is 3-5 words, short enough to scan and long enough to convey meaning. Notion averages 3 words per headline; Atlassian averages 6.

Simple, factual, scannable. "No notifications," "No results," "No tasks." This pattern appears across every system studied and dominates in search results, settings, filters, and developer tools. Adding "yet" (as in "No guests yet," "No files yet," "No transactions yet") appears in ~11% of headlines and transforms a dead-end into a forward-looking state. Six of 10 systems use this suffix.

This pattern splits into two distinct tones. "You're all caught up" and "You're up to date" skew celebratory, used for inbox zero and completion. "You haven't created any rulesets" stays neutral, used for first-use in technical products where the user needs to take action.

This pattern appears in just ~5% of headlines, always for first-use onboarding. "Create your first GitHub project," "Create your first code project." It's encouraging and action-oriented, but narrow in application. 80% of these co-occur with illustrations.

Context determines whether body text is needed, not a blanket rule. Search results, settings, completion states, and dashboard zeros don't need it. The headline or surrounding UI says enough.

When body text is present, the median length is ~10 words. The most common range is 6-10 words (30%), followed by 11-15 words (21%). Only 15% of instances exceed 20 words. The dominant formula is "[X] will appear here" (~20% of body text): "Issues assigned to you will show up here" (Linear), "Test payouts will show up here" (Stripe). Linear's Projects page is an outlier at 33 words, justified because it's feature education for a complex concept. For utility contexts, the systems that get it right keep body text under 20 words and link to documentation for the rest.

Less than 10% of instances start with negative framing like "You don't have..." or "There are no..." when neutral alternatives exist. Airtable uses "You don't have any shared apps" on its Shared page, emphasizing absence over possibility with more words to say less. The dominant pattern (27% of all headlines) is the neutral "No [noun] yet" formula, which states the fact without assigning blame.