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Comment by prawn | Hacker News Reader

Maybe change "0 comments" to something like "Start a discussion" when there are no comments. Makes it seem like a graveyard when they're all empty.

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I really like this. How does one go about learning more about improvements like these?

You're not going to find a list of these types of improvements that will apply directly to what you're working on, but any intro to UX book should help you get into the right mindset to identify them on your own. Design of Everyday Things is a good start for somebody with no knowledge at all of UX.

http://www.goodui.org/ is a good place to start.

"Don't make me think" by Steve Krug is a great place to start.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0321965515/

Try thinking a long the lines of "get the ball rolling", when designing interfaces where some regions must start from a blank slate, e.g. use placeholders, prompts, etc.

In my experience even seasoned designers do a poor job of this. They show you comps of with the perfect set up -- everything populated, beautiful photos uploaded by the user that are perfectly square, 100 comments on very post (or whatever the analog is for your app).

I've gotten a lot more insistent that designers show me "empty" designs where the user has just signed up and various corner cases like a photo that is really tall.

For empty states in particular, check out http://emptystat.es/ or https://www.pinterest.com/statanasova/ux-empty-states/

You just have to pay attention...look at the site you're posting on! hn says "discuss" instead of zero comments.

done;)

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