15 Laws of UX Design that Each of Us Faces Every Day. Part 1

A good design shouldn’t be noticeable. Instead, it should just help you solve your tasks smoothly and perform actions on the sites. But behind the simplicity of UX design lies the study of patterns in human behavior. See below for the basic UX laws that we encounter every day and find tips on how to use them.

#1 — Hick’s law

Synonym: paradox of choice

Hick’s law states that the time needed to make a decision depends on the amount of choices available to a person. The more choices exist, the more time we need.

This law is named after British and American psychologist William Edmund Hick. He and his colleague Ray Human studied the dependence between the number of stimuli and an individual’s reaction time to them. In 1952 they conducted a test.

That experiment involved 10 lamps that lightened randomly. Participants had to choose the one that lightened. The more lamps were there, the more time people needed to choose the right one.

THIS FORMULA DESCRIBES HOW INCREASING THE NUMBER OF CHOICES WILL INCREASE THE DECISION TIME LOGARITHMICALLY

How To Use It

1. Reduce the number of choices

When response time is critical to increase decision time. For example, this is important for control system environments and menus. Remember that the less options you give a user, the more likely he performs an action.

2. Break down complex and long processes into smaller steps

For example, you can divide the user registration process into several screens. It will make the interface more user friendly.

3. Keep a balance between reducing complexity and oversimplifying

Breaking down the choices for a series of lots of small chunks can make the user leave before reaching the goal.

There are two rules to make small steps work: show how many steps you have and try to limit them to 5 steps max.

4. Use the highlighting to help users to avoid overloading and to make a choice quicker

You can stand out important options for users among the cluttered interface.

5. Categorize choice to navigate users in a website

If one menu offers direct access to every link, it could quickly overload the user.

How To Break The Law

There are situations when infinite choice works great. For example, infinite scroll in Instagram or Tik Tok. At the same time, in both cases actions are so simple that users actually can repeat them a lot of times. It is different with Netflix, for instance. The reduсtion of options here works much better: people like different lists like Trending Now, Top-10 In Your Country, Best Comedies and so on. Such lists help users to make a hard decision — how to pick one film or TV show among thousands.

#2 — Law of Prägnanz

Synonyms: principles of grouping, the law of perceptual organization

Why Prägnanz

“Prägnanz” is a German word that means salience, conciseness, and orderliness.

The law of Prägnanz is the fundamental principle of the Gestalt laws of grouping. Gestalt laws are rules which describe how humans perceive visual elements and simplify complex images.

Gestalt psychologists argue that our mind has an innate disposition to perceive patterns using these five categories: proximity, similarity, continuity, closure, and connectedness.

In Practice

Look at the picture below. What do you see in it?

Most likely the image on the left reminds you of an atom, on the right — a flower. You don’t see them as a group of curves and new forms appeared when all these curves meet each other. Instead of that you are trying to identify familiar objects.

Pretty much the same way you can apply this principle to UI. Users see your interface as a whole and this means two things.

1. If you want to ease the user’s perception use simple forms and group them in obvious and expected way.
2. If you want to highlight an element, well, break this rule, but try to avoid chaos. Breaking rules is effective only when it contrasts order.

#3 — 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.

Who is Jacob

Jakob Nielsen is a usability expert and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group — UX research and consulting company. In 2000 he described his observations on users’ behaviour. According to Nielsen, users’ feel confused and frustrated when they face uncommon patterns in design. In these cases they tend to abandon tasks and leave the site.

Tips & Tricks

1. Use familiar UX patterns
   Users should focus directly on products, services, offers and other content, instead of complex and creative innovations in UX.
2. Keep balance
   Sites overloaded with creativity and non-standard elements confuse users. Try to limit the amount of unfamiliar elements.
3. Help users
   Give them clues when it comes to non-obvious patterns.
4. Meet expectations
   The user should feel complete control over your site. Let users’ expectations come true, and they will trust the site and probably come back again.
5. Do not deny users’ experience
   Keep in mind the past user experience, focus on it and use it. It’s better than creating something new just because you want to be different.

Design Glossary by FlowMapp

#4 – Tesler’s Law

Synonym: the law of conservation of complexity

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.

DESIGNED BY ROMAIN BRIAUX

History

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.‍

Tips & Tricks

1. Remove the main burden on users at the stage of development and design of the system.
2. Don’t oversimplify. It is impossible to make a product without a single complexity. But by simplifying the system, you make it more difficult to work on it. If you save 5% of the complexity of the application for the user, but add 50% of the complexity for its development, is it worth it?
3. Balance the difficulty. Carefully decide how much to transfer complexity from users to developers and vice versa.
4. Before you simplify the processes, analyze whether such a function is required at all.

#5 — First Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s Law states that the amount of time you give a task to take is equivalent to the amount of time that task will take. In other words, the work fills up the time allotted for it. For example, if you have a week to finish an article, the article will take all week to finish. Basically, the more time you have available to complete the task, the more time you will spend doing it.

ILLUSTRATION BY STORYTALE

History

In 1955, Cyril Parkinson, a British military historian, published a satirical article in the British magazine The Economist, in which he stated the empirical law: “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion”. In this article, he talked about how organizations have uncontrolled growth because of their self-serving nature: each department creates work for the other. The official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals. Cyril Parkinson later promoted his idea in a book “Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress”. Despite its satirical origins Parkinson’s statement is true today.

Tips & Tricks

1. If the task takes a long time, try to do it with more quality.
2. Avoid prolonged perfectionism of the result. The more alternatives and improvements you offer, the more you add to the task and do more work. Focus on a workable result.
3. Set goals and define clear criteria, otherwise the task can become exhausting and long.
4. Set tight deadlines for your project. This will help you spend exactly that amount of time working and improve your productivity.
5. Stop working late. If you apply Parkinson’s Law and condensed your working hours to a shorter or at least regular workday then you’ll increase your ability to focus and become more productive.
6. Use Pareto Principle to your advantage. Look at everything that involved in the process and identify the most important elements. Then focus your time on tasks that actually matter.
7. Track your time. To identify your critical tasks you have to know exactly how you’re spending each hour of your day.

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Read about the following UX laws in the second part of this article:

15 Laws of UX Design that Each of Us Faces Every Day. Part 2

15 Laws of UX Design that Each of Us Faces Every Day. Part 3