Blog
Product design
Writing on designing SaaS products, dashboards and the internal tools people use all day, drawn from work we have shipped.
Designing for people who stare at one screen all day
Operator tools are not consumer apps. Steppers, radio groups over menus, conditional fields and navigation for people who are on shift, not visiting.
Data tables that do not overwhelm
A table gets overwhelming when it is designed as a view of the database rather than an answer to a question. Columns, sorting, status and density.
Onboarding that survives the first week
Onboarding is designed for the first ten minutes and judged on the first week. What to show before the product holds any of the user's data.
Empty states: the screens most SaaS products forget
First run, no data yet, filtered to nothing and error are four different problems with four different fixes. How to design each one properly.
Designing a dashboard people actually check daily
A dashboard earns a daily visit by answering a question the person already had. What that means for the top row, the chart, the rail and the colour.