4 Laws of UX (User Experience) Design You Should Always Follow

You’ve likely encountered the Laws of UX (User Experience) in your daily surfing of the web. Savvy, good designers abide by these laws to ensure your website provides the optimal experience.

Jon Yablonski, a product designer, created the Laws of UX in order to take key principles from psychology, and develop a guide for designing in a way that is adapted to people. The goal? Designers can use this knowledge to build more human-centric, and intuitive, products and experiences. Providing a good user experience ensures that customers remain the top priority, your brand is seen as trustworthy, helps to solve a problem, and ultimately can help you create long-term brand loyalty. 

In Laws of UX, Yablonski discusses twenty-four best practices to follow when considering your design Although twenty-four best practices can sound pretty intimidating, so we’re here to help you break them down. Below, we’ll dive a bit deeper into four great  principles that you can’t afford to not implement in your next UX design. 

Jakob's Law

Have you ever entered a website, and had difficulty navigating it? Maybe you're unable to find the piece of information you need, leading you to click off the site and end up confused and frustrated. Perhaps you’ll use a competitor’s website, that you’re more familiar with. Not exactly a great user experience. Jakob’s Law states that users prefer your website to work the same way as websites they’re already familiar with. 

Through using familiar patterns and designs, websites and apps can keep their customers focused on the goal at hand- finding pertinent information and ultimately purchasing and product or service. One important concept to be mindful of are mental models. Mental models are how we understand the world around us. They shape how we think and simplify complex thoughts and ideas. Concepts that align with our mental model can make us feel safe and comfortable in situations. Leveraging existing mental models can help us create better user experiences, allowing them to focus on achieving their goals.

Miller’s Law

Each day, we’re exposed to seemingly infinite amounts of knowledge, and it’s only a matter of time before our brains feel as if they’ve been overloaded. It’s been found that the average person can only remember 7 “chunks” of information at one time, plus or minus 2. This is referred to as Miller’s Law, a study conducted by psychologist George A. Miller in 1956. 

When designing your content, you’ll want to keep the “chunking” principle front of mind. We use this law every day when we enter a phone number, or a credit card number to purchase something online. Organize content into smaller chunks to help users process, understand, and memorize a bit more easily. By chunking this information, you can also make it much more user-friendly for your customer's ability to scan to find exactly what they are looking for.

Hick’s Law

Have you ever logged on to a website, only to be inundated with choices? Were you effectively able to make a decision, or did you give up? This is where the practice of Hick’s Law can come into play.

Hick’s Law is a simple idea that says that the more choices you present your users with, the longer it will take them to reach a decision. In 1952, two psychologists, William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman set out to examine the relationship between the number of choices present, and the reaction time associated with the number of choices. As you can probably imagine, the more choices presented to the subject, the longer it took them to make a decision.

Hick’s law can be used to narrow down big volumes of information without overloading the user. If you’re looking to simplify a seemingly complex process, such as the checkout process, you can show your customer in steps, versus throwing things like payment options, shipping options, and billing options on one screen. You can also take the extra step to highlight recommended options to enhance the user experience.

Peak-End Rule

When we’re designing a product, content, or experience, one of the ultimate goals is to make it memorable, and hopefully in a positive way! Consider your last experience with a movie you really loved. What stands out to you? Probably a climactic scene, and the way it ended. But imagine if there was no high point, or it was overshadowed by a dull scene? It would probably be much less memorable. This is known as the Peak-End Rule. This rule states that people judge an experience primarily 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.

In 1993, participants were subjected to two different versions of an unpleasant scenario, in this case, exposure to cold water. In the first scenario, subjects submerged their hands in cold water for 60 seconds, and in the second, they submerged their other hand for 60 seconds in the same cold temperature, but then were asked to hold their hands in place for another 30 seconds, and the temperature was raised one degree. Participants were then asked which trial they’d like to repeat, and surprisingly, they chose the second, despite the longer trial. The conclusion? The subjects liked the memory of the second trial better or simply just disliked it less. 

The takeaway when it comes to user experience? Pay close attention to the most intense points and the final moments of the consumer journey. You can do this by picking out the moments when your product is most helpful, valuable, or entertaining to your user, and designing it to be more captivating. 

Although we’ve only scratched the surface of the Laws of UX, we believe that these four we’ve presented are non-negotiables when it comes to design. Interested in learning more? Contact us today and we can help tailor your content to be more user-friendly.