Systems
Interface work that starts from the states the system can occupy rather than from a list of screens. Most usability problems are modelling problems that reached the surface.
You are probably reading this because:
Every new requirement adds a screen, and the product is now forty of them.
Users complete the task and are not sure whether it worked.
Support answers the same three questions all day, and each is a design decision.
The design file and the built product diverged eight months ago.
- 01
Flows before screens
The paths a user actually takes, including the ones that fail: what happens on a rejected payment, an expired session, a partial upload. The unhappy paths are where trust is won or lost, and they are usually the ones nobody drew.
- 02
Information architecture
What belongs on one surface and what does not, named the way the user names it rather than the way the database does. A menu is a model of the domain, whether or not anyone modelled it.
- 03
Interface and design system
Components with defined states — empty, loading, partial, error, success — so the built product cannot quietly omit half of them. A design system is a constraint, not a sticker sheet.
- 04
Bilingual and right-to-left from the start
In this market, Arabic is not a later phase. Layout, typography and directionality are settled at the beginning, when it is still cheap.
- 01
Flow maps covering the failure paths, not only the happy one
- 02
Information architecture with the naming decided and justified
- 03
An interface design with every state specified, ready to build against
- 04
A design system your team can extend without asking us
Invariant
Model states, don’t multiply screens.
- Do you do design without the engineering?
- Yes, and we will say so if the design is not the constraint. Handing over a beautiful interface for a system that cannot support it wastes your money and our reputation.
- Do you work in Figma?
- Yes, and the handover includes the states and the logic, not just the frames. A file that only contains the happy path is a brief for a rewrite.
- Can you redesign without a rebuild?
- Often, and that is worth establishing first. A surface redesign over an incoherent model buys about six months.