UX Magnificent Seven
A compilation of my favorite UX Laws
Sometime last year when I began my journey into UX design, I came across a wonderful resource, a website that listed a number of rules that guided UX design, termed as UX Laws, they were put together by Jon Yablonski. I've read through every one of them, and I find these seven very important at this stage of my career.
Whether you are just beginning out as a designer, or you're already established, these rules are no skip over, you could even be implementing some without knowing that they are laws. Cheers to adding some new principles to your process 🥳🥳🥳
Aesthetic Usability Effect
Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable.
This law states that users will automatically recognize beautiful design as design that will be easier to use.
Have you ever skipped a clustered ad design on social media? That’s the aesthetic usability effect at work. When well used in a design, it can be likened to that movie trailer that totally kept us glued to our seats, it masks usability issues in apps, typo errors in written work. It lures users like a rat to cheese.
In the past, teams were so focused on functionality that they missed the importance of visuals, and ended up creating products that worked but looked awful. Thankfully that’s not the case today, as businesses have realized its importance.
It is a law the people at Google, Instagram, Apple, Disha, and many other brands have leveraged on.
Fitts Law
The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.
In ordinary terms, the time it takes to click or interact with an action is dependent on the size of the action (button/link) and it's distance from the user's finger or cursor
Buttons are to mobile apps, hyperlinks are to the web, this is one of many practical applications of this. It is important, especially when designing for mobile apps to put primary actions within the reach of the thumb, because of it’s major use when wielding a phone.
It’s also good practice to make typography visible, and readable.
Hicks Law
The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.
As the number of choices increases for a user, the more time it takes for that user to make a decision
This is applicable to areas such as radio buttons, checkboxes, and drop-down lists. Don’t make people go through the stress of thinking if Thor 2 is the best Marvel movie.
There is a reason user research should be done when creating products, it can also help us narrow drop-down values to what is necessary.
Albert Einstein once said “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”, just do it.
Jakobs Law
Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.
Users spend more time using other products than they do using yours, so they naturally expect your own product to work in a similar manner.
There is no use being innovative when it will only end up confusing your users, no one has ever used another shape other than the right-facing triangle as a play button. Except you are pioneering a whole new kind of product, which is not always true, you should stick to building your product around the processes your prospective users are accustomed to.
By leveraging existing mental models, we can create superior user experiences in which the user can focus on their task rather than learning new models.
I used this law when doing my first case study last year, and it was immensely helpful.
Law of Common Region
Elements tend to be perceived into groups if they are sharing an area with a clearly defined boundary.
When elements are observed to have a boundary around them, they are seen as a group.
Ever heard of the quote “birds of same feather flock together”? This is it. Proximity is a principle of design that teaches us to group like items together. Circles to rounded shapes, and squares to block shapes, making it easier for the user's brain to map items, and improve usability.
Pareto Principle
The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
The greatest impact or benefit comes from only a few of your product features.
I first heard about this principle in a movie, and it has various uses. In the case of design, it basically means finding how your product really benefits your user and then going on to make those benefits the center of your design thinking.
Focus the majority of effort on the areas that will bring the largest benefits to the most users.
Peak-End Rule
People judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak and at its end, rather than the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.
Users will generally base their entire experience of using your product based on certain anchor points, rather than the whole process itself.
I heard somewhere that the beginning, mid-point, and end of a story are always where a writer puts the greatest effort, and the same principle is applied in movies.
Pay close attention to the most intense points and the final moments (the “end”) of the user journey.
What is it like carting items, and then finally paying for them on your e-commerce platform? Do you require unnecessary details, like the user's address for an ebook? Or do you just go straight to the point?
Keep your users delighted as much as possible, remember that one frustrated user will hurt you in more ways than one.
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