Empty state

[michaelgallagher]

What?

There are a number of places in the app where a user can look for data but none is available, temporarily. For instance, the "your approved prescriptions" page.

Should we have a standard pattern for empty state pages?

We might handle these by showing the normal page title (e.g. "Your approved prescriptions") and then show text content that says something lie "you have no approved prescriptions". Or, we might handle these by altering the page title itself, e.g. "You have no approved prescriptions".

Further, should we handle these kinds of pages differently to a step in a transactional journey that a user would not encounter as regularly? (There is a structural difference – one is a cul de sac, where you go in and then back, while the other is a place you pass through.)

[michaelgallagher]

Static page title

An example of how an empty state works now, in which the page title is static and we change the page content as needed.

Dynamic page title

An example of how an empty state might work with a dynamic page title. An issue we've identified here is that this idea would break the standard convention of a page title matching the link text from the previous page. When a page is accessed via a card link in a menu, the two should match.

Current thinking

Right now, we think that pages that are persistent "places" a user can visit to see lists of content (e.g. your approved prescriptions, your GP appointments, your hospital appointments) should have static page titles that do not change based on the content of the page. The reasoning is that these pages are things a user would access repeatedly over time, so they should have a predictable structure. Additionally, these kinds of pages are accessed via a card link in a menu, and the standard convention is for the link text and page title to match.