Jakob’s Law and Usability
Unnecessary creativity is real.
We are on the internet all the time. We have developed muscle memory for basic flow on applications and websites. Our minds have also learnt the changes that come when we move from Safari to Chrome, Android to iOS, and laptop to mobile.
The playbook of pattern is set.
In fact, this behaviour is proven by several psychological phenomena. One such phenomenon is Apophenia which describes the human tendency to see patterns that do not actually exist.
For instance, all the instant messaging apps and communication platforms, from Skype to Instagram’s direct messages, have the contact’s picture on the left side of their names. All the users, across the globe, expect the pictures to be aligned that way.
Jakob’s Law takes this simple conformance and gives you a principle to last through the design cycle, serving two key purposes:
- Stops you from reinventing the wheel
- Justifies user expectations throughout the user journey.
What is Jakob’s Law?
Coined and created by Jakob Nielsen, principal and co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, the law is defined as follows:
“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.”
It tells you to take your user’s love for the well-known and make it a part of your product. When you are building a digital interface, some principles are obvious and your user knows them like the back of their hand.
A list of songs is a playlist, you add what you buy to a cart, and you always hit a send button for messages.
How it works?
Imagine if cars change the way wipers work or if jars start opening when you turn them clockwise (I physically cringed while writing this).
Will there be anything wrong with it? Absolutely not. Will your user dislike it? Faster than you can blink.
Once you understand the importance of the similarity, you understand why it works. When the experience of your product resembles the one your user is familiar with, they recognise it. There is an instant establishment of trust. This unexpected familiarity breeds confidence and encourages interaction with the product.
Does Jakob Law tell you to steal? No. It guides you to comply.
And one might argue that if everyone did the same thing then we will end up with an identical boring web experience. In concept, you are right, but the real world tells a different story.
The most classic example — Driver seats in cars.
It is a well-known fact that driver seats in the USA are on the left; whereas, in south-east Asia, they are on the right. When brands moved to India, they changed their standard model to suit Indian users. They could have chosen not to comply but they knew that it would tank their brand.
This is the key message — Jakob’s law does not tell you to imitate design, it tells you to follow user behaviour.
Even if it leads to a similar experience, it will be the one your user loves.
It is not anti-creativity, it is pro-process.
Why should you follow Jakob’s Law?
Because of Mental Models.
Mental Models is how users employ their cumulative past knowledge to derive expectations. They help in multiple ways:
1. They are valuable for designing. You can match the mental model of your user to enhance the joy they derive from the product. It gives you a huge headstart as your users bring in previous knowledge to tell what they expect from the product.
2. A wholesome design experience exists at the intersection of the designer-user agreement. Designers use multiple methods like user interviews, personas, journey maps, empathy maps, et al. to achieve that. Mental Models help in adding perspective to these methods.
3. When you understand where your user is coming from, you design for their pleasure. Their pre-existing mental models give you an insight into how mature they are and where they need guidance. This also helps in defining your microcopy.
If you move away from these Mental Models, it leads to discordance and adds to the user’s cognitive load. Jakob’s Law reduces burden and closes the gap between the user’s expectation and reality.
Implementing Jakob’s Law
First of all, to make it clear, Jakob’s Law is in no way your free pass to copy existing designs. Second of all, the law is not a replacement for user research and testing, it is an additional perspective.
You will always find areas where you have to break the ceiling and build a new pattern. If your user research backs your hypothesis, go through the change.
Let’s dig a little deeper to understand the implementation:
1. Jakob’s Law brings in context
When you let specific context marry the general established patterns, you stand at the realms of a blissful product. Even in the mundanity, the product offers something new and unique. Context is the winner when it comes to User Experience. As designers, your goal is to find the best interface patterns that align with context. For that, you have to study:
- The brand & the product
- The potential market
- The user
Users are the guiding point of this research. They help you bear in mind that different target groups have different experiences and tastes. They have different templates in their minds that they compare your interface to (driving seats :: cars).
Therefore, you need to pick from patterns that a group of users follow. Even for different target groups for the same product, you have to align with demographics and culture.
Once you crack the code for users of all kinds, the context behind the potential market and the brand open up.
2. Jakob’s Law gives freedom to pick distinguishers
If you understand the user and the context well, you will see the beauty in Jakob’s Law. Amidst all the sameness, it gives you a lot of room to design & build your uniqueness. You can pick the theme behind your forms, shapes, illustrations, colours, tone of voice, and animations. These are the basis of your design language and help you build a brand that works. This uniqueness gives your product a personality that shines.
Once you understand that identity & user experience you can build a product flow that users remember due to context but retain due to your brand persona. While your design language enhances usability, the differentiators complement the details. The immediate relevance establishes a relationship that moves beyond the peripheries of screens.
3. Consistency and a method to the madness
Jakob’s law celebrates an all prevalent uniformity that is an equalizer. But it also tells you to leave when the pattern is not serving the purpose. This whole order in the chaos brings in the most important thing to the product: consistency.
Consistency is clarity.
For instance, for filling-in the dates, a number pad alongside a 3-field input works. The user expects that the cursor will automatically jump to the next field. Going away from this expectation will lead to frustration. But for the rest of the options on the product, the barrel picker might work better. It is all about context.
When you give the user that consistency, you eventually give them the needed familiarity. They do not have to take uneducated darts in the dark. This helps to not only build a sustainable design language for your product but also an incremental user behaviour, one where the product and user evolve together.
Remember, nowhere the law wants you to refrain from twisting the tale. You can and will design a new and innovative approach that resolves an issue better than the general established pattern. And if the benefits outweigh the additional cognitive load, then you must give the user that joy.
There is enough literature on User Experience Design to have a prima-facie understanding of what works where and what does not. Some laws resonate general consensus and some raise eyebrows.
The beauty of Jakob’s law? It does both.
