LAWS OF UX: THE 5 MOST IMPORTANT LAWS OF UX DESIGN

People ignore design that ignores the people

There are tons of laws, principles and best practices in UX Design. In this article, you would get to know the 5 most important laws of UX Design.

Aesthetic-Usability Effect

Aesthetic-Usability Effect states that users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable. This refers to user’s tendency to perceive attractive products as more usable.

People tend to believe that things that look better will work better. even if they’re not effective or efficient

In other words, Users have a positive emotional response to your visual design and that make them more tolerant of minor usability issues on your site. In most cases, this is a positive thing from your perspective. This effect is a major reason why a good user experience can’t only be functional UI

Bear in mind that the aesthetic-usability effect has its limits. A pretty design can make users more forgiving of minor usability problems, but not of larger ones. (As the first law of e-commerce states, if the user can’t find the product, the user can’t buy the product. Even great-looking sites will have no revenue if they suffer from poor findability.) Form and function should work together.

In 1995, Researchers Masaaki Kurosu and Kaori Kashimura from the Hitachi Design Center tested 26 variations of an ATM UI, asking the 252 study participants to rate each design on ease of use, as well as aesthetic appeal.

They found a stronger correlation between the participants’ ratings of aesthetic appeal and perceived ease of use than the correlation between their ratings of aesthetic appeal and actual ease of use. Kurosu and Kashimura concluded that users are strongly influenced by the aesthetics of any given interface, even when they try to evaluate the underlying functionality of the system.

Aesthetically pleasing interfaces are worth the investment. Visual designs that appeal to your users have the side effects of making your site appear orderly, well designed, and professional. Users are more likely to want to try a visually appealing site, and they’re more patient with minor issues.

However, this effect is at its strongest when the aesthetics serve to support and enhance the content and functionality of the site. Additionally, this effect often influences user comments during research.

Fitt’s Law

Fitt’s Law explains that the time it takes to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.

Touch target, CTA button or anything tapable should be large enough to actually be tapped or interacted with. If it’s too small, it’s start to frustrate the user.

The key idea to lash unto is distance and size that means for our users to find the button link or CTA (Call-To-Action) what you need them to find is really dependent on where it’s placed in the page or on the screen.

The problem is that if the Fitt’s law isn’t applied, you’d place the CTA or important content on the page in areas that are too far for the users to get to or make sense of or the button doesn’t stand out be a it’s not big enough

In 1954, Psychologist Paul Fitt’s examines the human motor system, and it showed that the time required to move a target depends on the distance to it and yet relate inversely to its size.

By his law, Fast movement and small target resulted in greater error rate due to the speed accuracy trade off . Fitts is widely applied in UI and UX design.

Few ways to implement Hick’s Law and start using it right now

— Touch target, CTA button or anything tappable should be large enough to actually be tapped or interacted with. If it’s too small, it start to frustrate the user.

— Your touch target should have enough space in between, so you shouldn’t accidentally click on one or the other ie make sure there’s a good amount of space in between.

— You should place your design where they’re incredibly accessible and easy for your user to find.

Hick’s Law

Hick’s Law states that the time it takes to make decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. In other words, the more choices they are the more you cognitively overload your users.

Ideally you should simplify choices for the user by breaking down complex tasks into smaller steps. Don’t give them tons of choices but rather slim it down and give them the most important choices

In 1957, William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman set out to examine the relationship between the number of stimuli present and an individual’s reaction time to any given stimulus to choose from the longer it takes for the user to make a decision on which one to interact with. Users bombarded with choices have to take time to interpret and decide giving them work they don’t want.

Few ways to implement Hick’s Law and start using it right now

— If decisions need to be made quickly, response time or something needs to be actually critical. You need to minimize the amount of options on the screen available .

— If you have really complex flows and complex things you’re trying to accomplish break them into smaller, easier, digestible steps & allow the users to go through step by step so you won’t overload them.

— You can actually help users to make decisions by leasing the options or by giving them a suggested option, by highlighting the options you want them to take.

Jakob’s Law

Jakob’s Law states that users spend most of their time on other site or interfaces, this means users prefer your site to work the same way as other site they already know.

It makes more sense to learn on the tried and true tactics and techniques that other people had pave way with

If you’re trying to accomplish similar things that other people are trying to accomplish with their users then it makes no sense to create some sort of new amazing navigational structural system that nobody ever seen before.

Jakob Nielsen, President of the Nielsen-Norman Group co-founded with Don Norman of Apple to establish the quote, “You can simplify the learning process for users by providing familiar design patterns”.

Here’s a few ways you can actually apply Jakob’s Law to your everyday work

— The more alike your product/design is to other products the more easy it is for your user. Consider taking some design inspiration, some of the UI patterns & UX pattern that they’re using throughout their work. Seeing they already know how to use that, why don’t you make it easy for your user?

— Don’t make your users learn new mental models of how to get from one screen to another or how to navigate works from one area into another. Use similar flows, Mental models and structures to make your design application to make sense.

— If you have to make a change and deviate from the normal or the standard, make sure you do it as subtle as possible unless you abstract yourself away so much from what’s usable that you end up confusing your user. So, if you have to stray, don’t do too far.

Miller’s Law

Miller’s Law states that the average person can only keep 7 items in their working memory (plus or minus about 2), so organize content into groups of five to 9 items at a time.

7 items (plus or minus 2) is the maximum people can actually hold onto and think about it one time before they start forgetting some of the options that had just being shown to them.

This is the best time to actually challenge content, business idea and strategies because if you have 50 things the user needs to select from, do they really need to select form all 50 of those things?

In 1956, George Miller asserted that the span of immediate memory and absolute judgement were both limited to around seven pieces of information, the point where confusion creates an incorrect judgment is considered the channel capacity.

Here is a few way to actually apply Miller’s Law into your work

— Figure out ways to categorize and then sub-categorize objects or items inside of your design

— You do not have to use the magical number of Seven. If you have less option go with less that is better, don’t fill it out with some bunch of superfluous content just because you want to hit seven! Challenge yourself to have as little as possible on the page to make the Users Experience as good as it can possibly be.

Thank you so much for reading this until the end!! I’m open to any feedback and discussion on this. You may reach me on LinkedIn or through my Twitter.