Eight directions — four per screen — against the founder’s two critiques. Every mockup is built on the v3 Evergreen Mint tokens verbatim (packages/design-tokens/src/v3.ts), in Bricolage Grotesque / Instrument Sans / Spline Sans Mono, at iPhone 16 Pro proportions. Nothing here is implemented — this is a board to pick from. Click any phone to see it at 1:1.
“We’re recreating the elements and just smashing them together inside this practice perforated box. It doesn’t flow nicely. Even the send-help-now — weird perforated.” Wants it to look like what it’ll look like — while being unmistakably practice.
“It’s kind of centered vertically and you’re not really sure what you’re meant to do. The ticks don’t animate in… It looks like ticks, almost like features. The user doesn’t get a pat on the back.”
The armed beat of the rehearsal. Today it is a dashed perforated box containing shrunken copies of the real controls. Each direction below shows the genuine pre-dispatch screen and moves the practice signal out of the controls and into the frame around them.
Recreated elements inside a dashed frame; the send button is dashed too, so the one control that must read as real reads as a sketch.
Why it fails: two competing frames (dashed box + card-less controls), the disc has no live counterpart at this moment, and dashed-red teaches the wrong button.
A phone inside your phone: the real arm screen, untouched, running in a hardware bezel with the practice badge welded to the chin. “This is the screen — on a test rig.”
Trade-off: controls render at 87% of true size, so the muscle memory is close but not exact. Strength: zero ambiguity about what is real and what is the wrapper.
The genuine screen at 1:1, dimmed, with one control spotlighted and a step chip on top. The app is teaching over itself instead of rebuilding itself.
Trade-off: the scrim dims the very screen we want them to recognise. Strength: full-size controls, exact muscle memory, and the instruction sits where the thumb already is.
The live screen, pixel for pixel, with one persistent ribbon under the island and a hairline rep tracker at the foot. Nothing else is added anywhere.
Trade-off: the lightest practice signal of the four — the ribbon must never scroll away. Strength: the screen a member meets in the worst moment is exactly the screen they rehearsed; no Continue competes with the slider.
The real screen behind a proof sheet: registration ticks at the corners, an edge-mounted label, and a watermark faint enough to read through. Practice as a material, not a box.
Trade-off: a watermark is decoration — it must stay at ~4% or it becomes noise on a life-safety screen. Strength: full-size real controls with a signal that survives a screenshot.
The completion face. Today: vertically centred, three checked rows that read as a feature list, no arrival, no congratulation. Each direction below is top-anchored, gives the ticks a moment of arrival, and replaces the sub-line. Three replacement candidates are listed under every variant — plain, calm, no melodrama.
Three static ticks in a card, floating in the middle of the screen. Reads as a feature list; no sense of “done”.
Why it fails: the ticks are already there when the screen arrives, so nothing was earned; the sub-line is a slogan; and the block floats with no anchor.
The ticks land one after another down a completing timeline rail — each with its own small ring pulse. The reps arrive as events, not as a list.
Trade-off: the mono telemetry is a new grammar for onboarding. Strength: personal and specific — it reports what you just did, so a tick can’t read as a feature.
A three-segment meter fills to full as the screen arrives, with a “Ready” state chip. The reward is a state change you can see, not a badge.
Trade-off: a score risks feeling gamified on a life-safety product — the third row must never gate Continue. Strength: unmistakable “complete” state; also the natural home for a later “practice again” streak in settings.
One arrival: the success disc with slow mint ripples, the three reps demoted to a single quiet line, and a dated rehearsal receipt. The pat on the back is the whole screen.
Trade-off: the reps lose their detail; a member who skipped the third rep needs a quieter variant of the line. Strength: the clearest emotional beat, and it re-uses the paid-celebration success disc already in the design language.
The sub-line made literal: two panels — what you sent, and how you stopped it — in the app’s own red and mint. The lesson is the layout.
Held the disc the full three seconds. In a real emergency, help would already be on its way.
HOLD · 3.0sSlid to cancel with 22 seconds left. Nothing was sent, and nothing needed explaining.
CANCEL · 0:22Trade-off: a red panel on a success screen breaks the one-red-surface-at-a-time rule unless the red stays a hairline tint. Strength: it teaches the mental model one last time instead of just congratulating.
Constraints that survive any pick.