TableView empty state — how to boost app UX in few minutes

Tomas Parizek
Jul 22, 2017 · 2 min read

UX — user experience is critical for any application. If your application has bad UX, nobody will want to use it. The other way around, if your app has excellent UX, users will enjoy using it and will share it with their friends. That’s why large companies like Spotify have entire teams of UX designers specialized in making the experience of using their app best for their users. UX design is a large topic, many people study it for years, so it is absolutely not possible to summarize it in one short blog post.

In this article, I want to talk about one specific easy way to boost the UX of your app in a few minutes. It’s so simple, I just wonder, why every app doest have it. It is the empty state of a table view.

Image 1

Image 1 is an example of what I’m talking about. Let’s say this is a todo list app, this example shows how would the app look like without any items. It’s easy to tell, that the UX of the app on the right side is much better. And the best part — it takes just a few minutes.

Of course, you can code this behavior yourself, but why would you, when there are many libraries that do exactly that for you? I like TBEmptyDataSet because it is super easy to implement. First, you need to add this library to your project, the easiest way to do that is by CocoaPods. Then the ViewController with table needs to conform to the TBEmptyDataSetDataSource and TBEmptyDataSetDelegate protocol. Finally, you implement a few methods and that’s it.

Image 2: Methods implemented in example app (Image 01, right side)

You’ve just made your app much better in 5 minutes!

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade