Messaging Is a UI Code Smell | Community Feed

When a UI leans too hard on generic “messages” (alerts, snackbars, banners) it can be a sign the experience isn’t doing enough of the communicating.

In Messaging Is a UI Code Smell, Matt Goldman makes the case that messaging is often a symptom—covering for missing affordances, unclear states, or feedback that should be embedded directly in the UI.

Takeaways worth applying

Prefer contextual feedback near the control/state that changed
Use messages for the cases that truly deserve interruption (errors, critical warnings)
Treat repeated “we should show a toast” ideas as a prompt to revisit the flow