UX laws for simplifying designs
Fundamental understanding about UX Laws can make you a resilient designer.
Usability and functionality are essential elements of UX design. So to perform UX one needs to know about UX laws which helps to create practically correct designs. UX laws are nothing alien but a close sum connection of psychology and mathematics. So it becomes important for any designer to design their product by keeping important principles and laws in mind. Let’s understand them one by one with practical examples.
Fitts’s Law
“The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.”
In 1954, psychologist Paul Fitts, examining the human motor system, showed that the time required to move to a target depends on the distance to it, yet relates inversely to its size. By his law, fast movements and small targets result in greater error rates, due to the speed-accuracy trade-off. Although multiple variants of Fitts’ law exist, all encompass this idea. Source
Target buttons are often called as call-to-action (CTA) on pages. Fitts law basically states that the target actions must be large enough, with a good spacing between them and should be present in the context of the message.
Take a look at the product page on the left, the site has chosen to place buttons such as “add to cart” and “buy now” (which are primary CTA of this page) at second scroll, which will not be visible to user at first and user has to search for it to perform the main action.
Product page towards the right on the other hand, has decided to add a single call to action button & at very first glance, large and distinct enough in the context of product selection, this does not need any guess work and makes it obvious which is the target action.
Jacob’s 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.”
Jakob’s law (also known as “Jakob’s law of the internet user experience”) was put forth in 2000 by usability expert Jakob Nielsen, who described the tendency for users to develop an expectation of design conventions based on their cumulative experience from other websites.This observation, which Nielsen describes as a law of human nature, encourages designers to follow common design conventions, enabling users to focus more on the site’s content, message, or product. In contrast, uncommon conventions can lead to people becoming frustrated, confused, and more likely to abandon their tasks and leave because the interface does not match up with their understanding of how things should work. source
Lets understand this by looking at live examples above shared, both the products are e-commerce websites and they are trying to sell their products by showcasing product items . On the left we can see that the list doesn’t provide ease to users for wishlisting items at one click and on the right we see quick click to wishlist products which makes the user experience hassle free.
Both are doing the same thing but users always seek easy steps or actions to be followed while using any product.
Zeigarnik Effect
“People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than complete one.”
Bluma Wulfovna Zeigarnik (1900–1988) was a Soviet psychologist and psychiatrist, a member of the Berlin School of experimental psychology and Vygotsky Circle. She discovered the Zeigarnik effect and contributed to the establishment of experimental psychopathology as a separate discipline in the Soviet Union in the post-World War II period. In the 1920s she conducted a study on memory, in which she compared memory in relation to incomplete and complete tasks. She had found that incomplete tasks are easier to remember than successful ones. This is now known as the Zeigarnik effect. She later began working at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity which is where she would meet her next big influence Vygowski, and become a part of his circle of scientists. It was also there that Zeigarnik founded the Department of Psychology. During that time, Zeigarnik received the Lewin Memorial Award in 1983 for her psychological research. Source
In the above screenshot we see the examples for profile completion acknowledging.
On the left product page we see the only thing the user is aware about the completion percentile and whenever the user will visit this website it will bother about how much he will have to again fill information to at least complete it. On the right side product page we can see that the user is aware about how much completion is done and what exactly the user needs to fill for completing the task, it will try to motivate the user to complete the information.
Hence way of representation is really important to attract and motivate product users.
Von Restorff Effect
“The Von Restorff effect, also known as the “isolation effect”, predicts that when multiple similar objects are present the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered.”
The theory was coined by German psychiatrist and paediatrician hedwig von restorff(1906–1962), who, in her 1933 study, found that when participants were presented with a list of categorically similar items with one distinctive, isolated item on the list, memory for the item was improved. Source
Through the above provided product examples we can understand this law well. On our left, we see a product which shows three different cards with ratings, pricing & brief details. All look similar so it will take user’s more time to understand which scheme is best and which should be chosen.
On the other hand, we see the same scenario but highlighting the best scheme using attractive visuals which will catch the user’s eyes to make a choice and it will save his decisions making time.
Occam’s Razor
“Among competing hypotheses that predict equally well, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.”
Occam’s razor or law of parsimony is the problem-solving principle that “entities should not be multiplied without necessity”, or more simply, the simplest explanation is usually the right one. This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions. Source
Let’s look at a real-world example of Occam’s Razor used by a company whose simple and effective heuristic design creates less confusion during purchase of any product.
On the left hand we see a product where filter options are more in numbers to confuse users and increase criticality of user experience.
On the other hand we see a product where the number of filters used are satisfactorily neat and less critical to use.
Serial Position Effect
“Serial-position effect is the tendency of a person to recall the first and last items in a series best, and the middle items worst.”
The term was coined by Herman Ebbinghaus through studies he performed on himself, and refers to the finding that recall accuracy varies as a function of an item’s position within a study list. When asked to recall a list of items in any order (free recall), people tend to begin recall with the end of the list, recalling those items best (the recency effect). Among earlier list items, the first few items are recalled more frequently than the middle items (the primacy effect). Source
Users have a tendency to best remember the first and last items in a series. So they experience accordingly and feedback is based upon the same experience.
Users are proven to be able to remember information at the beginning and at the end well, try to put important information at the beginning such as information related to discounts, recently launched product information, collaborating with someone or others
Then we can put other information that supports the user to perform a certain action at the end of the website page, for information that is considered not very important or supporting information can be placed in the middle of the website page.
Miller’s Law
“A person can only keep 7(plus or minus 2) items average in their working memory.”
In 1956, a psychologist and a researcher George Miller completed a study in which he found what he thought to be the limit of human capacity for processing information. It is often interpreted to argue that the number of objects an average human can hold in short-term memory is 7 ± 2. This has occasionally been referred to as Miller’s law.
Hence organising and chunking content in a manageable way becomes important to create an effective design.
By observing above example we can make out in left screen there are multiple filters and if a user selects many filters it will confuse him to remember what filter he used and this will make the user go through the filter list again and again which can frustrate the user.
On the other hand we see a website where whatever filter is used gets visible to the user in the form of a tag at the top of product list which helps the user to save time as they don’t need to go here and there to recheck what filters they used.
Summary
Finally we can say that designing interfaces is fun activity and with little science, psychology and mathematics it becomes a realistic & usable product. All these principles or laws are for designers to understand things from the user’s perspective because it is the user who has to ultimately utilise the product.
“There is a big difference between making a simple product and a product simple.“
— Des Traynor
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