UX laws are a group of laws or design standards that designers must take into consideration when creating and upgrading user experience.
These laws were formulated for designers to make their work easy. Sometimes, your design can be tagged as a complete waste of time if you didn’t follow or omit a UX law when designing.
Below are five UX laws you need to follow when designing. Example images from liftedlogic.com
- Fitts’s Law
Fitts law is an idea of a psychologist called Paul Fitts. It states that the time that is needed to obtain a target depends on the distance and size of the target. The shorter the distance and the target, the longer it takes to obtain it, while the longer the size and the distance of the target, the longer it will take to obtain it. Generally, what this law is saying is that you should make the user interface elements to be easily reachable and wide, and place them close to the user.
- Hick’s Law
Hick’s Law is an idea of two psychologists namely William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman. It is very similar to Fitts law. It states that the time needed for making a decision increases with the number of difficulty of choices available.
Generally, what this law says is that. it is better to reduce choices, because when choices are minimal, it will be easier to make a decision. Some designers believe that multiple choices improve user experience, but it is not true. Problems of this nature arise mostly in e-commerce design where consumers have to browse products with a similar design.
- Millers Law
This law was named Miler’s Law in honor of George Miller. This law states that people can remember up to seven different elements in their brain. Miller said having more than seven elements will generate uncertainty and fogginess for the user when they cannot recollect the option they are searching for. He opined that applications that have more than seven elements be grouped to avoid uncertainty.
- Tesler’s Law
Tesler Law is an idea of Larry Tesler. It is called Conservation of Complexity. This law states that for every design, certain complexities cannot be reduced to the maximum.
Generally, what Tesler is saying is that UX designers will want to make their work easier and faster. In the process of making their work easier and faster, they should realize that some things cannot be simplified to be more basic. For example, a grocery store receipt must have the description of the items bought and their quantities, the amount that was paid, the location of the store, and the name of the attendant. If these four data are missing in a receipt, then it cannot be called a receipt.
- Doherty Threshold
Doherty Threshold was formulated from the research carried out by Walter J. Doherty and Ahrvind J. Thadani in 1982. This law states that the speed by which a computer and its users interact increases performance. They said late responses make users lose patience. They opined that the average response time of a computer should not be more than 400 milliseconds.
