HICK HYMAN PRINCIPLE
As humans, we are too complex creatures. We always expect too much from everything and later face choice paralysis. To solve the Choice paralysis problem, a Principle was established in the early1950s known as Hicks’ Law or Hick-Hymans Law.
Hick’s law, or the Hick–Hyman law, named after British and American psychologists William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman, describes the time it takes for a person to decide as a result of the possible choices he or she has: increasing the number of choices will increase the decision time logarithmically.
Source: Wikipedia
A user journey is said to be perfect when a user can achieve his goals smoothly and without any distraction. For this, he must be presented with optimum information at every point in his decision-making process.
This popularized the K.I.S.S principle expanded as
Keep It Simple Stupid
OR
Keep It Short Simple, which was the elaboration of the Hicks’ Principle by the US Navy.
WHAT IS HICKS LAW?
Imagine if eBay decides to club all of its menu items together under one common list, it would take hours to find the product you want to buy from the platform. This is prevented by implementing Hick’s law. It is done by grouping similar items in larger buckets and then creating smaller buckets inside them. On a product website, its features are grouped as Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary to cater to the needs of its audience by grabbing their attention as required.
To sum it up, the information or options should be clubbed together to form groups and presented to the user one group at a time. This makes the decision-making process simpler and easier as fewer options are available at a time to choose from.
WHEN TO USE IT AND WHEN NOT TO USE IT?
In a CRT(Critical Response Time) situation, when multiple choices are to be made to achieve a target, its very important to group similar options together and then make choices from them.
But if there are not too many choices available or the task is very simple, then running users through multiple option-sets can create a negative impact.
HOW TO IMPLEMENT HICK’S LAW?
Each website has a set of functions that users can perform. Those functions and the potential routes should be identified. Using the card-sorting techniques, these functions can be grouped together and at each instance of the decision-making process, these groups can be presented to the user to make appropriate choices.
CONCLUSION
It is easier to choose when fewer options are available at a given point. Alternatively, grouping information in major buckets and minor buckets inside them makes it easier for the user to process and digest the information.
