Three UX Laws to Help IA and Navigation Work Together

The fundamental purpose of information architecture is to help us find information efficiently. This is influenced by how we structure information and what labels we use to define that structure. IA and navigation design work together to help facilitate a meaningful UX.

This process must accommodate both humans (information seekers) and computers (search engines). In order to accomplish this, we need to understand how each processes information.

Search engine algorithms are quite complicated, and I won’t get into that here. But there are some baseline principles that every IA practitioner should understand. In this piece I want to talk primarily about how to help human beings find information.

UX Laws

Many UX practitioners reference a number of “laws,” which are basically principles and biases known to psychologists human behavior specialists. Many of these laws apply to IA because a meaningful UX requires well-structured information.

Specific to IA, there are three important laws to consider: Hick’s Law, Law of Proximity, and Miller’s Law.

Hick’s Law

Also referred to as “Hick–Hyman Law,” Hick’s Law was part of a study in 1952 by psychologists William Hick and Ray Hyman. It demonstrates that the time required to make a decision increases as the volume and complexity of choices expands.

The principle it creates for IA: simplify choices to reduce cognitive load.

Law of Proximity

Part of the Gestalt school of psychology, the Law of Proximity suggests that we inherently consider objects in proximity as groups.

The principle it creates for IA: group for efficient information indexing.

Miller’s Law

Also referred to as “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two,” Miller’s Law was written and published by cognitive psychologist George A. Miller in 1956. It suggests that the number of objects we can store in working memory is 7 ± 2. (It’s no coincidence that phone numbers are 7 digits long.)

The principle it creates for IA: minimize to increase memorization.

Applying the Principles

So, these three UX laws boil down to simplify, group, and minimize. Let’s visualize how these apply to information architecture, specifically in the context of a navigation system.

Fig 1: flat information set

The grid in Fig 1 represents a flat/unstructured information set comprising 70 components. In the context of a website this could be translated as 70 links to 70 pages, so we have some work to do in order to streamline the information-seeking process.

Referencing our list of principles we can begin with Hick’s Law to simplify our content:

Fig 2: simplified information set

The grid in Fig 2 shows us the beginning of progress as we simplify 70 pieces of content into 4 types of information (denoted by color) as part of an information architecture process. This decreases our cognitive load because the segmented content reduces the information’s complexity.

To improve this we need to reference the Law of Proximity and group our segments:

Fig 3: grouped set of segments of an information set

Now we see a big leap towards digestibility. Fig 3 represents how we might group our 4 types of content for efficient indexing. This is where our brains make a transition from “4 types of 70 segments of content” to “4 types of content.”

While we’ve made great strides, we still have 70 links to 70 pages. Our brains will use excessive cognitive energy to process this. So we need to build a navigation model that references Miller’s Law. This helps us minimize how many choices are available:

Fig 4: minimized groups of a simplified/grouped information set

Fig 4 represents how we minimize the 4 groups of 70 pages by blending each group into a single data point, such as categories. As a navigation structure this would reduce our total choices to 4, instead of showing 70 choices in 4 groups.

We’re essentially designing a system that reveals content in layers. These focused groups of information can be digested one segment at a time, the result being local navigation:

Fig 5: isolated group from an information set

If our labels are intuitive, we don’t need to see every option at once. We know that we can get to information about apples through a navigation labeled “fruit.”

This system makes large volumes of information digestible and focused, clearing clutter which reduces cognitive load.

Ultimately, navigation design and information architecture must support each other. They work together to facilitate frictionless information seeking. Hopefully understanding these three principles will help you bring them together in a meaningful way.

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