Alright, let me tell you about my little adventure with what we started calling “star cues.” When the idea first popped up, I thought, “Easy peasy, just slap a star icon on stuff.” Boy, was I wrong.
The Beginning of the Mess
So, we needed a way to highlight new features or important announcements in our app. “Let’s use star cues!” someone chirped in a meeting. Seemed straightforward. My first pass was literally just adding a little star icon next to menu items. Done in an hour. I even patted myself on the back.
Then the requests started trickling in.
- “Can the star pulse a bit, make it more eye-catching?”
- “Actually, for super important stuff, can it be a bigger, golden star?”
- “What if we need to show a number next to the star, like a count?”
- “And these stars need to disappear after the user clicks, or maybe after a week, or… well, it depends.”
Before I knew it, we had about five different “star cue” components. Some were plain CSS, some needed JavaScript for animations, others were tied into the backend for dynamic visibility. It was a patchwork quilt of stars, and honestly, it looked a bit tacky. Maintaining it? A nightmare. Every time a new “highlight” was needed, it felt like reinventing the wheel, or at least, trying to figure out which of our many wheels to use.
Why This Got Under My Skin
This whole star cue fiasco really brought back memories of this one freelance gig I did a few years back. I was roped into “fixing up” a small business website. The owner, bless his heart, had discovered a plugin that let him add flashing banners, animated GIFs, and god-knows-what-else to every page. He thought more “pop” meant more sales. The homepage looked like a digital carnival had exploded. You couldn’t find the actual products for all the “LOOK AT ME!” stuff. My job was to make it usable without offending him by removing all his “flair.” It took weeks of gentle persuasion and showing him heatmaps of users just bouncing because their eyes hurt. I learned then that when everything is highlighted, nothing is highlighted.
That experience scarred me a bit, I guess. Seeing our app slowly go down that same path with these “star cues” was giving me flashbacks. We weren’t selling carnival tickets; we were trying to guide users, not overwhelm them.
Sorting It Out
So, I decided to take a step back. I grabbed a coffee, sat down, and just started sketching out what a “star cue” actually needed to do. The core thing was simple: draw attention to something specific, temporarily.
My first move was to consolidate. I told the team, “Look, we’re having one type of star cue. That’s it.” We debated a bit, but I held firm. We settled on a simple, clean design. No crazy animations, no rainbow colors. Just a star.
Then, I worked on the logic.
- Where do they show? We defined specific, limited placements. Not just anywhere someone felt like it.
- When do they show? Clear triggers. New feature deployed? Okay. Important system message? Fine.
- When do they go away? This was key. On click? After a set time? After a specific user action? We made these rules consistent.
I built a single, reusable component for this. It took some refactoring, ripping out all the old, bespoke star solutions. It wasn’t fun, but it was necessary. The new component had simple props to control its behavior, but the visual aspect was locked down.
What Happened Next
Peace. Seriously. Suddenly, adding a new “star cue” wasn’t a multi-hour debate and coding session. It was just using the component. The UI looked cleaner. And guess what? Users actually seemed to notice the cues more because there weren’t a million variations competing for attention.
It felt good to get that sorted. Sometimes the simplest solution is staring you right in the face, but you’re too busy making things complicated with shiny objects. These “star cues” taught me that lesson all over again. Stick to the basics, keep it consistent, and don’t let things spiral out of control just because you can add more glitter.
