Home empty-state aggregation and on-demand AI Tutor policy

DEC-0037 - Home empty-state aggregation and on-demand AI Tutor policy

Superseded by DEC-0038 (2026-02-18). This record is kept as historical baseline before removing mandatory-task behavior on Home.

Context

DEC-0012 established Home as a summary router but still left ambiguity for zero-history users and Home-level visibility of AI Tutor. Stage C needed one current-state policy that is clearer for execution and future UX extraction.

Decision

Home aggregation model:

• Home post-login remains an aggregate summary surface across major product areas.
• For each major area, Home follows dual-state rendering:
  • has_data: show compact stats and detail CTA.
  • no_data: show empty-state guidance and start CTA.

Major feature blocks on Home:

• Home keeps three major blocks:
  • Quan ly khoa hoc,
  • Quan ly luyen tap,
  • So tu vung.
• Each block has a dedicated action:
  • course block CTA -> explore/buy course flow,
  • practice block CTA -> start self-practice,
  • vocabulary block CTA -> open/start vocabulary notebook.

Goal/profile completeness nudge:

• If user has not chosen learning goal yet, Home shows a nudge block to complete goal/profile.
• This nudge is non-blocking and coexists with core learning CTAs.

Required items visibility:

• Mandatory checks or required study tasks are surfaced on Home summary.
• Required-item visibility is independent from whether user already has rich history metrics.

AI Tutor visibility on Home:

• AI Tutor on Home is user-invoked only.
• Home does not auto-open AI Tutor by default.

Carry-forward compatibility:

• Home still keeps self-study/practice as default emphasis.
• Community teaser sections (for example Learn Mode, weekly challenge) remain visible as motivation layer, including for no-history users.
• Suggestion rule remains:
  • no goal -> suggest all programs,
  • has goal -> prioritize related courses/exercises and recent popular practice window (14 days).

Boundary:

• Home stays summary-level and routes users into dedicated management pages for deep details.

Decision Value

• Makes first-session behavior explicit for brand-new users.
• Prevents empty/blank Home states by design.
• Keeps Home actionable without forcing users into one single CTA.
• Clarifies AI Tutor interaction style on Home and reduces UI noise.

Rationale

For a platform with mixed user maturity, dual-state blocks (has_data vs no_data) are simpler to scale and easier for users to understand than creating separate Home variants per segment.