Focus on the entire experience not the happy path

Most product folks (designers or product managers) like to focus on the middle or "happy path". While there's nothing wrong with focusing on this middle, it's important to think about the entire user journey.

Nobody cares about the thing you’ve designed, unless you can get them past the beginning. ^[1]

As an example, let's say you were creating a table of items. It's easy to create stories and mockups focused on the experience where the table is populated with 10-20 items. But there are many other experiences you need to think through:

1. Zero items for new users - What is the experience for a brand new user? How do you build an experience that encourages them to create an item?
2. Zero items for existing users - What happens if a user ends up with zero items? Does the experience need to be different from new users?
3. Infinite items - What is the experience when the user has thousands of items?