21 UX Laws
Most of the time when someone talks about design, their thoughts are more inclined towards the product or an aesthetically pleasing system and look wise it is beautiful. People think that a designer has the job only to make things beautiful. Well! that is one point but from a designers perspective — it is not always to make things look good. When you come up with a design or a product, user experience comes with it. Some experiences will make users unhappy or happy, bored or active. This will eventually make your product a frustrating one or loved one.
Let take a look into it with an example — Suppose you are going to Delhi by road. You have your car ready, fueled it up and have a roadmap to reach there. You have two ways to go there let say way(1) and way (2). Now when you choose way (1) there have been dirt tracks, holes in it and most of the time with no signboards, very few stoppages for fueling, eating or resting for few minutes. On the other hand, way (2) comes up with all these benefits, it has paved roads with signboards, fueling stations on the way and all that things. Now, these both tracks take you to your destination but you'll mostly prefer to go via way (2) because this adds a pleasing experience to your journey. Things become easy on the way (2). Similar things happen with a product whether digital or physical because they also add some experience to the user.
Understanding human psychology and their behaviour can help us build a better product that can add to their experience. Keeping a set of laws (UX Laws) in mind we can do this. Through this article, you will get to know these laws and how they influence user behaviour.
Cognitive Bias
Zeigarnik Effect
“People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks.”
You did everything well but in the end, you missed one thing to do. This will clinch you every time make you remember your unfinished task and that possibly will attract you to go and finish that.
Serial Position Effect
“Users have a propensity to best remember the first and last items in a series.”
You have probably heard idioms like “morning says the day” also like “All is well when the end is well.” This is how our brain marks things. It marks the first and last thing dominantly and brings a deep impression of it.
Peak-End Rule
“People judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak and its end, rather than the total sum or average of every moment of the experience.”
if you ever have a relationship and then a breakup, you have experienced this pretty well I guess. You won’t remember the overall sum of your relationship every time but you will miss the moments when it was at its peak or when it ended mostly.
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.”
It's easy to spot a red ball in the group of white, it's easy to spot a kid in the group of adults, it's easy to spot things that look different in the group of similar things. This is how the isolation effect works.
Gestalt
Law of Common Region
“Elements tend to be perceived into groups if they are sharing an area with a clearly defined boundary.”
If you watch cricket you must know what boundary means. There are players under that boundary, a total of 13 players remain there inside the boundary and there are players who sit outside of it. Those who are inside the boundary are considered to be part of the game. Similarly here in the picture when I gave a boundary around 4 circles, our brain start to consider them as a group.
Law of Uniform Connectedness
“Elements that are visually connected are perceived as more related than elements with no connection.”
Take a look at this picture, There are a set of white balls and there are some balls that are connected. when our brains see things like this that are visually connected, we start perceiving things as a part of the same group as we can see here.
Law of Similarity
“The human eye tends to perceive similar elements in a design as a complete picture, shape, or group, even if those elements are separated.”
In our society, we often see people categorised according to their size and colour. The same thing happens in design too. Our brain always groups things that are similar in size, shape or colour most of the time. This is visible in the picture here. People will always see red balls here as a different group because they are similar in colour.
Law of Proximity
“Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend to be grouped.”
According to this law when things are closer to each other they are considered to be part of the same group. Like in this case all are balls of the same size and colour but few balls are closer to each other and we start perceiving them as a group.
Law of Pregnanz
“People will perceive and interpret ambiguous or complex images as the simplest form possible because it is the interpretation that requires the least cognitive effort of us.”
What do you see? Some floating elements or a cube. Probably a cube because when the brain sees complex things it always tries to conceive them more simply. This is how the brain is programmed over the years during evolution. Our brain always tries to minimize the cognitive load. This is how it saves energy and help us to survive.
Principals
Teslar’s Law
“Tesler’s Law states that for any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced.”
This law is also known as “The Law of Conservation of Complexity.” What it means in a system is there will be some complexity always and we can not reduce it. But as a designer, we should always try to minimise the effort of our user by removing some amount of complexity in the process.
Postel’s Law
“Be liberal in what you expect, and conservative in what you do.”
Always try to be empathetic to, flexible about, and tolerant of any of the various actions the user could take or any input they might provide. Accept variable input from users, translating that input to meet your requirements, defining boundaries for input, and providing clear feedback to the user.
Pareto Principle
“The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.”
Always remember that all the 80% effects are being caused by 20% of the efforts. It was given by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. In 1906, he noted that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by 20% of the people. He became somewhat obsessed with this ratio, seeing it in everything. Some examples of these are:
- 80% of work is completed by 20% of your team.
- 80% of software problems are caused by 20% of bugs.
- 80% of sales come from 20% of your clients.
………and so on like this.
Occam’s Razor
“Among competing hypotheses that predict equally well, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.”
It is a problem-solving principle and was attributed by William of Ockham. According to this principle when people are presented with competing hypothetical answers to a problem, they tend to choose the one that makes the fewest assumptions. It is always because the brain wants to save energy by lowering the cognitive load.
Doherty Threshold
“Productivity soars when a computer and its users interact at a pace (<400ms) that ensures that neither has to wait on the other.”
In key points with some examples, this rule can be understood as:
- If system feedback is within 400 ms. It helps to grab users’ attention and increases productivity.
- Animations are used to visually engage people while loading or processing is happening in the background.
- Progress bars help make wait times tolerable, regardless of their accuracy.
Heuristics
Aesthetic-Usability Effect
“Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable.”
If you have ever visited restaurants to have a thali for your lunch, you might have seen things comes in a thali in a different manner. Chefs always try to serve those things in an organized and aesthetic manner. Now if you are given two different such thalis to eat most probability you will choose the one which is more aesthetic. We start perceiving that things that are more organized and aesthetic are good ones. This is how Aesthetic-Usability Effect works.
Goal-Gradient Effect
“The tendency to approach a goal increases with proximity to the goal.”
This is quite easy to understand, things that are nearby are achieved early and things that are far away will be achieved later. So the tendency to approach a goal increases with distance to the goal. So if we are trying to achieve a goal by our user, we should always try to keep that goal in front of the user or nearby his approach, so that it is easily achievable.
FITT’s Law
“The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.”
So here are the two examples. One with a bigger target and the other with a small one. It's clear that when you are about to click the target button on the screen using your cursor, there is a high probability that you will take less time to achieve the goal in the second option. It is because the target is big in size and near to the user.
Hick’s Law
“The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.”
Suppose you love chocolates and you are asked to choose one from 2 different flavoured chocolates as an option. It is easy to choose right? But what if you are given 10 different flavoured items to choose from. You might get confused and will take more time to choose the one you want. This is why we should try to give minimum options as possible to the user.
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.”
As a user when we use a product, we want it to be simpler and easy to use. As a choice, we always try to see other options for that product and we also want those products to work the same as others. This is because we never want the same product from a different brand to work differently and we should have to try to under that same thing again and again. This is why the products that we make should be as consistent with the real world as possible. This will help user lowering their effort to learn new things every time.
Miller’s Law
“The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory.”
Our short term memory is like a RAM of a computer and it differs from person to person. Few people may remember many things at a time but an average person can remember 7( plus Minus 2) things at the same time. So we should always keep in mind that while grouping things the number of elements should not exceed more than this. This can increase the cognitive load on the user. Ideally, 5 is the best one to practice.
Parkison Law
“Any task will inflate until all of the available time is spent.”
If you are given 7 days to clean a room, you will take 7 days to clean it. If you are given 3 days to clean a room, you will take 3 days to clean it. If you are given 1 day to clean that same room you will take 1 day to clean that room. This is how Parkinson law works. Most of the tasks are completed at the end of the timeline. The task will always inflate until all available time is spent.
Click on this link below to know more about the laws:
Thanks for reading.
