🪴 UX Laws
Aesthetic Usability Effect
OVERVIEW : Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : Aesthetically pleasing design can make users more tolerant of minor usability issues. Aesthetically pleasing design can mask usability problems and prevent issues from being discovered during usability testing.
Doherty Threshold
OVERVIEW : Productivity soars when a computer and its users interact at a pace (<400ms) that ensures that neither has to wait on the other.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : Provide system feedback within 400ms in order to keep users’ attention and increase productivity.
Fitts’s Law
OVERVIEW : The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : Make elements you wish to be easily selectable large and position them close to users. This law especially applies to buttons, which the purpose of these elements is to be easy to find and select.
Big things are easier to point at.
Hick’s Law
OVERVIEW : The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : More choices results in longer to think about these choices and make a decision. Simplify choices for the user to ensure by breaking complex tasks into smaller steps. Avoid overwhelming users by highlighting recommended options.”
It task less time to choose from fewer things.
Jakob’s Law
OVERVIEW : Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : You can simplify the learning process for users by providing familiar design patterns.
Law of Common Region
OVERVIEW : Elements tend to be perceived into groups if they are sharing an area with a clearly defined boundary.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : Adding borders (creating common regions) around an element or group of elements is an easy way to create separation from surrounding elements.
Law of Prägnanz
OVERVIEW : People will perceive and interpret ambiguous or complex images as the simplest form possible, because it is the interpretation that requires the least cognitive effort of us.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : The human eye likes to find simplicity and order in complex shapes because it prevents us from becoming overwhelmed with information.
Law of Proximity
OVERVIEW : Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend to be grouped together.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : The law of proximity is useful by allowing users to group different clusters of content at a glance.
Law of Similarity
OVERVIEW : The human eye tends to perceive similar elements in a design as a complete picture, shape, or group, even if those elements are separated.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : Ensure that links and navigation systems are visually differentiated from normal text elements, and are consistently styled.
Law of Uniform Connectedness
OVERVIEW : Elements that are visually connected are perceived as more related than elements with no connection.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : Group functions of a similar nature so they are visually connected via colors, lines, frames, or other shapes.
Miller’s Law
OVERVIEW : The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : Chunking is an effective method of presenting groups of content in a manageable way. Organize content in groups of 5-9 items at a time.
Working Memory
- 7 digits
- 6 letters
- 5 words
- 2 seconds of sound
Humans chunk items to remember them.
Occam’s Razor
OVERVIEW : Among competing hypotheses that predict equally well, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : Analyze each element and remove as many as possible, without compromising the overall function.
Pareto Principle
OVERVIEW : The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : Focus the majority of effort on the areas that will bring the largest benefits to the most users.
Parkinson’s Law
OVERVIEW : Any task will inflate until all of the available time is spent.
Postel’s Law
OVERVIEW : Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : Be empathetic, flexible, and tolerant to any number of actions the user could possibly take. This means accepting variable input from users, translating input to meet the requirements, defining boundaries for input, and providing clear feedback to the user.
Serial Position Effect
OVERVIEW : Users have a propensity to best remember the first and last items in a series.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : Placing the least important items in the middle of lists can be helpful because these items tend to be stored less frequently in long-term and working memory. Positioning key actions on the far left and right within elements such as navigation can increase memoriziation.
Tesler’s Law
OVERVIEW : Tesler’s Law, also known as The Law of Conservation of Complexity, states that for any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced.
Von Restorff Effect
OVERVIEW : The Von Restorff effect, also known as The Isolation Effect, predicts that when multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : Make important information or key actions visually distinctive.
Zeigarnik Effect
OVERVIEW : People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.
KEY TAKEAWAYS : Use progress bars for complex tasks to visually indicate when a task is incomplete, and thus increase the likelyhood it will be completed.
Steering Law
Wider paths = faster movement
Power Law
Practice makes you better
Different UI for noobies vs pros