Livin’ on the edge: how to design for edge cases early in the process

A scalable approach to designing edge case scenarios.

I used to loathe designing error states, and it was always in the aftermath. My go-to solutions used to be to use system default designs to make sure I hit all the edge cases. I loved to work on the core happy path but ignore the other non-core user journeys. Often I would hit a roadblock. I have to go back to my core flow which I meticulously designed to include the new use cases I stumbled upon. This cost me a lot of time and a lot of iterations.

I have improved a lot in anticipating unknown future use cases. In this blog, I share my process and how I approach designing for edge cases early in my design process.

The Framework

When starting a new project, I map out every use-case into the Temporal and Functional context framework.

Temporal Context

It showcases how often a user interacts with the product ranging from once (temporary) in the user life cycle to every time(permanent) they want to complete a task.