Empty State Inventory & Gaps
What this is. Asked for by the design team: one place to see how each part of
the app behaves when it has nothing to show. This documents every empty state that exists, the
surfaces that render a list and have none, and the questions arising. A matching launcher ships
in the app so the states can be reviewed on a device rather than only on paper —
Page Readiness → Empty States.
The in-app launcher, grouped by what it takes to reach each state.
1 · Three different treatments are in use
The most consequential finding is not a missing state — it is that empty is currently expressed three different ways, and only one of them is a component:
| Treatment | Where | Shape |
|---|---|---|
<EmptyState> component | 11 screens — KCM, favorites, jumpseat saved/recent/saved-searches, documents, notifications, policy detail | Icon + title + subtitle, centred |
.alpa-form-empty | Flight Finder results | A single line of text, no icon |
.ftdt-empty | FTDT duty period list | A single line of text, no icon |
The two bespoke ones are not obviously wrong — the Flight Finder one deliberately distinguishes signed out and service failure from genuinely no flights (AB#2319), which the shared component has no vocabulary for. But three treatments means a member meets three different visual languages for the same idea.
2 · What exists today
| Surface | State | Reachable how |
|---|---|---|
| KCM · airport not found | EmptyState | Route — /kcm/airport/ZZZZ |
| KCM · airlines search no match | EmptyState | Type a non-matching term |
| KCM · home with no menu items | EmptyState | Only if the CMS returns no children |
| Notifications · no flight alerts | EmptyState | Device with no subscriptions and sample fallback off |
| Notifications · flight update not found | EmptyState | Route — stale deep link |
| Notifications · Comms inbox | EmptyState (added) | Member with no Comms items |
| Notifications · Comms filter matches nothing | EmptyState (added) | Filter to an audience with no items |
| Favorites · nothing saved | EmptyState | Signed in, nothing favourited |
| Favorites · failed to load | EmptyState | Favorites service unreachable |
| Jumpseat · saved flights / saved searches / recent | EmptyState ×3 | Device with none |
| Jumpseat · airline policy not found | EmptyState | Route — ?airline=999999 |
| Documents · empty scope / empty category | EmptyState ×2 | Scope or category with nothing published |
| Flight Finder · no results | bespoke | Search matching nothing |
| FTDT · no duty periods | bespoke | Device with none |
3 · Gaps — renders a list, has no empty state
Each of these will render a blank area rather than say anything:
| Surface | When it goes blank |
|---|---|
| KCM · airports list | Airports feed returns nothing |
| KCM · policies search | Search matches no airline |
| Jumpseat · airline policies list | Policy list empty |
| My MEC · committees | Any of these four MEC feeds returns nothing — likely for a member whose MEC has not populated that section |
| My MEC · events | |
| My MEC · hotels | |
| My MEC · reps | |
| Member Resources | Resource list empty |
| Notification Settings · subscriptions | Member has no audience subscriptions |
| Search results | Query matches nothing |
The MEC four are the ones to worry about. The others need an unusual backend
state; a member whose MEC has not filled in its hotels or events is ordinary, and today that
member sees a screen that looks broken. Search results is the second concern —
a search matching nothing is a normal thing for a member to do, not an error condition.
4 · Questions for the design team
- One treatment or three? Should Flight Finder results and the FTDT duty
list adopt the shared
EmptyState, or do their extra distinctions (signed out / service failure / genuinely none) justify staying bespoke? If they should converge,EmptyStateneeds a vocabulary for why it is empty. - Does empty always need an icon? The component always draws one; the two bespoke treatments never do. Current icons are picked per-call-site (♡, ✈, 🕓, 🔍, ✉) with no guidance — worth a defined set.
- Empty vs failed. Favorites is the only surface that distinguishes "nothing here" from "we could not load it", and it does so by reusing the same component with different words. Should that distinction be visual rather than only textual?
- Does an empty state offer a way out? None of them currently carry an action. Several obviously could — an empty saved-flights could offer Search Flights, an empty search could offer Clear.
- The gaps above — which need designing now for alpha, and which can wait? Our read is that the four MEC screens and search results matter most, because a member reaches them in normal use.
- Filtered-empty wording. The Comms tab now says something different when a filter is the reason nothing shows. Should that pattern generalise to every filterable list?
5 · Related
- Empty State component spec — the shared component.
- Flight Finder notification grouping — the other open design ask from this work.
- Component Design Questions — the standing list.