Inactive states for buttons
I am currently working on an interface for an internal ticketing system. We are using a tile system to illustrate different services. Think about a grid of tiles on the screen. A requirement we got was to add a button on the tile that the user can click to open related articles. Catch here is that not ALL tiles have related articles......
I went with adding a button which has an inactive state that is greyed out IF there are no related articles for that tile. The inactive state ALSO has a hover which tells the user WHY it's inactive. The feedback I got was to hide the button when we don't have any related articles.
My question for you guys is, in cases like this does it make sense to hide the button entirely? You're going to have a grid of tiles with some having buttons and some don't.....I would imagine users would be confused why it exists for some of the tiles but not others? Am I overthinking this? Are inactive states a UX faux pas?
(I've come across another situation where I wanted to go with inactive states and am already getting some resistance from our internal team to it. Would love if there is some secondary research anyone's come across about this too)