7 UX Law
Hick’s Law:
Hick's Law, also known as Hick-Hyman Law, named after psychologists William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman, states that the more options available to a person, the longer it will take to decide which option is best. In other words, Hicks Law is used to simplify choices and remove barriers in decision-making.
This law states that the time it takes for a person to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. It emphasizes the importance of simplifying choices and reducing complexity in user interfaces to improve decision-making and navigation.
Takeaways
Minimize choices when response times are critical to decrease decision time.
Break complex tasks into smaller steps in order to decrease cognitive load.
Avoid overwhelming users by highlighting recommended options.
Use progressive onboarding to minimize cognitive load for new users.
Be careful not to simplify to the point of abstraction.
The formula for Hick’s Law is defined as follows:
RT = a + b log2 (n)
Fitt’s law
Fitts’s law gives us the relationship between the time it takes a pointer (such as a mouse cursor, a human finger, or a hand) to move to a particular target (e.g., physical or digital button, a physical object) in order to interact with it in some way (e.g., by clicking or tapping it, grasping it, etc.):
This law describes the relationship between the size of a target and the time it takes to reach it. It states that the time required to move to a target is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target. In UX design, this law is often applied to the design of buttons and interactive elements, emphasizing the need for larger and more accessible targets.
Takeaways
Touch targets should be large enough for users to accurately select them.
Touch targets should have ample spacing between them.
Touch targets should be placed in areas of an interface that allow them to be easily acquired.
The formula for Fitt’s Law is defined as follows:
T = a + b log2 (n) 2d/W
Miller's Law
In 1956, cognitive psychologist George A. Miller published a paper “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information” which changed the way people understood the human mind and revolutionized the design world.
According to his study, “the span of absolute judgment and the span of immediate memory impose severe limitations on the amount of information that we are able to receive, process, and remember.”
Miller's Law suggests that the average person can only keep around 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory at once. This principle is important for designing interfaces with manageable cognitive loads, avoiding overwhelming users with too much information at once.
Takeaways
Don’t use the “magical number seven” to justify unnecessary design limitations.
Organize content into smaller chunks to help users process, understand, and memorize easily.
Remember that short-term memory capacity will vary per individual, based on their prior knowledge and situational context.
The formula for Miller’s Law is defined as follows:
7+/-2
Jakob's Law:
Jakob’s Law states that users spend most of their time on other sites. That’s why they prefer sites that work the same way as all the other sites. For designers this means that it is always better to choose usual design solutions that are familiar to users.
Jakob's Law of Internet User Experience states that users spend most of their time on other sites and are more likely to expect your site to work the same way as other sites they already know. This principle emphasizes the importance of following familiar design patterns and conventions to create intuitive user experiences.
Takeaways
Users will transfer expectations they have built around one familiar product to another that appears similar.
By leveraging existing mental models, we can create superior user experiences in which the users can focus on their tasks rather than on learning new models.
When making changes, minimize discord by empowering users to continue using a familiar version for a limited time.
Parkinson’s Law
Parkinson's Law of Triviality is a crucial concept to consider in both UX design and digital marketing. By prioritizing the most important elements and avoiding getting sidetracked by trivial issues, designers and marketers can create products and campaigns that are more effective and impactful.
Parkinson's law is the observation that the duration of public administration, bureaucracy and officialdom expands to fill its allotted time span, regardless of the amount of work to be done.
Takeaways
Limit the time it takes to complete a task to what users expect it’ll take.
Reducing the actual duration to complete a task from the expected duration will improve the overall user experience.
Leverage features such as autofill to save the user time when providing critical information within forms. This allows for quick completion of purchases, bookings and other such functions while preventing task inflation.
Tesler’s Law
Tesler’s Law, also known as The law of conservation of complexity, states that for any system there is a certain level of complexity that cannot be reduced. According to the law, each application has a certain degree of complexity that either the developer or the user has to deal with.
Larry Tesler is a computer scientist who specializes in human-computer interaction. He has worked for companies such as Xerox PARC, Apple, Amazon, and Yahoo. Larry Tesler described the law in the mid-1980s. He argued that complexity does not disappear, but moves from one area to another. When you simplify the system for the user, you will inevitably transfer this complexity to the developers.
Takeaways
All processes have a core of complexity that cannot be designed away and therefore must be assumed by either the system or the user.
Ensure as much as possible of the burden is lifted from users by dealing with inherent complexity during design and development.
Take care not to simplify interfaces to the point of abstraction.
Postel’s Law
Postel's Law was formulated by Jon Postel, an early pioneer of the Internet. The Law was really a guideline for creators of software protocols. Computers used protocols to communicate with one another on the Internet. The idea was that different implementations of the protocol should interoperate. The law is today paraphrased as follows:
“Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.”
Although first stated with reference to TCP/IP, the Law has been applied in other areas, from the parsing of HTML to the acceptance of user inputs. The growth and success of the Internet has been attributed in part to this Law. However, its use in modern systems has been questioned. It's been suggested that following the Law is harmful from the perspective of maintainability, compatibility and security.
Postel's Law is also known as the Robustness Principle.
Takeaways
Be empathetic to, flexible about, and tolerant of any of the various actions the user could take or any input they might provide.
Anticipate virtually anything in terms of input, access, and capability while providing a reliable and accessible interface.
The more we can anticipate and plan for in design, the more resilient the design will be.
Accept variable input from users, translating that input to meet your requirements, defining boundaries for input, and providing clear feedback to the user.
Keep Following the Page: https://kreativeps.blogspot.com/
To know more about Gestalt Principle, Pareto Principle use in UX.
Comments
Post a Comment