Social products fail at the empty state.
The first user opens an app designed for a thousand users, sees nothing, and leaves. So the app stays empty.
Discovery has the same problem — it has to work before the system knows anything about the person.
Design the sparse case as the primary case
Every social product spends its most important months nearly empty. That is the state that deserves the design attention.
Lead with what is genuinely there.
Discovery starts from context — place, time, proximity — rather than a personalisation model with no data to work from.
Sparse is the default layout
Not an error state.
Early screens are composed for a handful of items, so a small network reads as intentional rather than broken.
Context before personalisation
Place and time work on day one.
Proximity-based discovery needs no history, which is exactly what the product does not have at the start.
Creation one tap from empty
The empty view offers the fix.
Where there is nothing to browse, making something is the primary action rather than a menu item.
An experience that reads as intentional when small.
Which is the only path to the point where it is large.