Principles of UX Design
Understanding the principles of UX design can be overwhelming, especially when you realise there is a myriad of laws and best practices in experience design. But fear not! We’re going to explain the four most essential laws of UX design that every Website Designer (or business owner who is DIYing their website) should know.
Why to Follow the 4 Principle Laws of Website Design
If you follow these 4 concepts in UI design, like we do when we design websites, then they will help:
- enhance your website’s usability
- the overall user experience of your website
- website visitor satisfaction.
1. FITT’s Law: Making Interaction Effortless via the Design Process
FITT’s Law states that the time required to acquire a target depends on the distance to and size of the target. Huh?!
In UX terms, this means your buttons, links, and call-to-actions, all should be large enough, as well as positioned conveniently, so as to ensure users can find and interact with them effortlessly.
Tips for Implementing FITT’s Law
1. Size Matters: Ensure all clickable elements are big enough to be tapped easily.
2. Mind the Gap: Keep enough spacing between touch targets to prevent accidental clicks.
3. Accessibility is Key: Position interactive elements in easily reachable areas of the design.
“FITT’s Law ensures your design is user-friendly by making important elements both sizable and accessible.”
2. Hick’s Law: Simplifying Choices
Hick’s Law highlights that the time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. If users face too many options, it could lead to cognitive overload, complicating their decision-making process.
Applying Hick’s Law in Design:
- Limit Choices: When decisions are crucial and time-sensitive, simplify the options available.
- Guide Through Complexity: Break complex processes into smaller steps.
- Use Suggestive Highlights: Highlight recommended actions to guide users efficiently.
For example, highlight the “Checkout Now” button over “Continue Shopping” to steer users in the intended direction, leveraging the von retorff effect.
How to take account of Working Memory to Maximise User Experience
Working memory plays a crucial role in UX design, as it directly impacts how users interact with digital interfaces. This cognitive system temporarily holds and processes information, allowing users to complete tasks efficiently.
Designers must consider the limitations of working memory, typically capable of holding only 5-9 items simultaneously.
To optimise user experience, they should employ strategies such as chunking information, using visual hierarchies, and providing clear navigation cues.
By reducing cognitive load and presenting information in easily digestible formats, designers can enhance user comprehension and task completion.
Implementing these principles helps create intuitive interfaces that align with users’ mental models, ultimately leading to more satisfying and effective digital experiences.
3. Jacob’s Law: Consistency is King
Jacob’s Law states that users spend most of their time on other websites, meaning they will prefer your website to behave similarly to familiar ones.
This means that if you emulate widely accepted patterns in your user interface, then you ensure users can navigate and interact with your site comfortably.
Harnessing Jacob’s Law:
- Leverage Familiar Patterns: Study popular patterns and incorporate them for intuitive interfaces.
- Stick to Known Models: Use established navigation flows and mental models in your user interface for a consistent user experience.
“By aligning with user expectations, you make your product as seamless as their favorite sites.”
4. Miller’s Law: Manage Working Memory Load
According to Miller’s Law, the average person can keep about seven (plus or minus two) items, in their working memory at a time. Overloading a person with options can lead to confusion, violating the law of proximity.
Effective Use of Miller’s Law:
- Categorisation: Organise content into digestible chunks and subcategories in your user interface for easier processing.
- Minimalism Wins: Use fewer options to improve focus and reduce distractions.
Remember, you don’t need to fill the page with seven items. Less is often more when it comes to clarity.
The Laws of UX: Additional Principles & Bonus Info
Psychologist Paul Fitts came up with 21 laws that every designer should know. They’re like a design guide to make things easier for users to interact with your design.
Some of the main UX laws include Fitts’s Law, Jakob’s Law, and the Law of Prägnanz. These UX principles help you avoid overwhelming users with many choices or confusing design elements.
For example, Miller’s Law states that people can only remember about 7 things at once, while Hick’s Law states that more options mean slower decisions.
When you’re working on a design project, keep these UX elements in mind.
Aesthetic-Usability Effect
The Aesthetic-Usability Effect is a crucial design principle that every UX designer and product designer also needs to understand. This UX design law suggests that users perceive pleasing design as more usable, even if it’s not necessarily more functional.
Jon Yablonski, known for his “10 Laws of UX,” includes this effect among other important psychological principles that influence user behavior.
The concept relates to other UX laws and principles, such as the law of common region and the serial position effect. These design laws help design teams create more effective and engaging interfaces.
While aesthetics are crucial, it’s essential to balance them with functionality, as suggested by the Pareto Principle in UX design.
According to the law, users tend to be more forgiving of minor usability issues in design products with appealing design looks. This principle, along with others like “interrupted tasks better than completed tasks,” forms part of the list of UX laws that every designer should know.
By applying these principles, designers can design better products that not only look good but also provide an excellent user experience design.
Cognitive Bias
Cognitive bias refers to systematic errors in thinking that affect our judgments and decision-making processes.
These mental shortcuts, or heuristics, can lead to flawed reasoning and irrational behavior.
Common examples include confirmation bias, where we seek information that supports our existing beliefs, and anchoring bias, which causes us to rely too heavily on the first piece of information we receive.
The availability heuristic leads us to overestimate the likelihood of events that are easily remembered or frequently discussed.
Understanding cognitive biases is crucial in fields such as psychology, economics, and marketing. By recognising these biases, we can work to mitigate their effects and make more informed, rational decisions in our personal and professional lives.
Von Restorff Effect: UX Law of Distinctiveness
The Von Restorff Effect, also known as the isolation effect, is a cognitive bias that states that distinctive items are more likely to be remembered than common ones.
In user experience (UX) design, this principle is crucial for creating memorable interfaces and experiences.
By making certain elements stand out through color, size, or placement, designers can guide users’ attention and improve information retention.
This effect is particularly useful for highlighting important features, calls-to-action, or key information on a website or app. Implementing the Von Restorff Effect effectively requires careful consideration of visual hierarchy and balance.
Overuse can lead to clutter and confusion, so designers must strike a balance between distinctiveness and overall usability.
The importance of Flow in UX Design
Flow is a crucial concept in UX design, referring to the seamless and engaging experience users have when interacting with a website or product. It occurs when users are fully immersed in an activity, losing track of time and self-consciousness.
In UX design, creating flow is essential for enhancing user satisfaction and productivity. Designers achieve this by eliminating friction points, providing clear navigation, and ensuring a balance between challenge and skill level.
When users experience flow, they are more likely to enjoy using the product, spend more time with it, and accomplish their goals efficiently. This leads to increased user retention, brand loyalty, and overall success of the digital product.
Goal-Gradient Effect in UX Design
The Goal-Gradient Effect is a powerful psychological principle that can significantly enhance user experience in digital design.
This concept suggests that people tend to increase their efforts as they approach a goal. In UX design, implementing this effect can motivate users to complete tasks and navigate through processes more efficiently.
Designers can leverage this by creating visual progress indicators, such as progress bars or step-by-step guides, that clearly show users how close they are to achieving their objectives.
By breaking down complex processes into smaller, manageable steps and highlighting the user’s progress, designers can tap into the Goal-Gradient Effect to boost user engagement, reduce drop-off rates, and ultimately improve overall conversion rates in digital products and services.
Cognitive Load
Have you ever heard of Cognitive Load? Psychologist Paul Fitts came up with these 21 laws that every designer should know. They’re like a design guide to make things easier for users to interact with your design.Some of the main UX laws include Fitts’s Law, Jakob’s Law, and the Law of Prägnanz. These UX principles help you avoid overwhelming users with many choices or confusing design elements. For example, Miller’s Law states that people can only remember about 7 things at once, while Hick’s Law states that more options mean slower decisions.When you’re working on a design project, keep these UX elements in mind. The Law of Proximity in UX says to group similar elements in a design together. This law is also useful for creating better layouts. Remember, good UX is all about making things simple and intuitive for users to navigate within your design.
Law of Proximity
The Law of Proximity in UX says to group similar elements in a design together. This law is also useful for creating better layouts.
By applying the Law of Proximity, designers can create visual hierarchies and organise information in a way that makes sense to users.
When related elements are placed close to each other, users naturally perceive them as belonging to the same group or category. This helps in reducing cognitive load and makes it easier for users to scan and understand the content.
For example, in a website header, you might group the logo, navigation menu, and search bar together, while keeping them separate from the main content area. This clear separation helps users quickly identify the different functional areas of the page.
The Law of Proximity can also be applied to:
- Form design: Grouping related form fields together, such as personal information or payment details.
- Product listings: Keeping product images, titles, prices, and add-to-cart buttons close together for each item.
- Menu structures: Organizing menu items into logical categories and subcategories.
- Content layout: Grouping related paragraphs, images, or sections together to create a cohesive narrative.
When implementing the Law of Proximity, use white space effectively to create distinct groups. The space between groups should be larger than the space between elements within a group. This helps reinforce the visual separation and makes it easier for users to distinguish between different sets of information.
It’s important to note that the Law of Proximity works in conjunction with other design principles, such as the Law of Similarity and the Law of Common Region. By combining these principles, designers can create even more effective and user-friendly interfaces.
Law of Similarity and Law of Common Religion
Have you ever noticed how your brain likes to group similar stuff together? That’s the Law of Similarity and the Law of Common Religion in action! It’s one of those Gestalt principles that explain how we perceive things.
Basically, our minds are lazy and love shortcuts. So when we see objects that look alike in shape, color, size, or orientation, we automatically assume they’re related or part of the same group.
This law is super handy in design and marketing. Designers use it to create user-friendly interfaces, and advertisers exploit it to make their ads more memorable.
Law of Uniform Connectedness
The Law of Uniform Connectedness is one of those interesting design topics that every designer needs to know along with Postel’s Law, Tesler’s Law, and Parkinson’s Law. They’re all important ux princples that state that elements that look similar or connected, are perceived as related.
This principle is crucial for creating better user experiences and can help you design more effective interfaces. It’s one of those design based principles for creating cohesive layouts that just make sense to users.
Whether you want to design apps, websites, or even dive into icon design, understanding these laws together with other guidelines for ux will seriously up your game in the design field. From the Hitachi Design Center to Silicon Valley startups, pros use these concepts to inform their design choices and create ux that really works.
Is Responsive Web Design Dead?
Fluid Layout is The Future
Responsive Web Design has long been considered the gold standard in design and development. However, some argue that it’s time to embrace fluid layout as the future of web design.
UX laws with examples show that proximity in UX design and other principles are more effectively applied in fluid layouts.
These layouts adapt seamlessly to every screen size, providing a superior user experience across devices. Fluid layouts also offer more flexibility for implementing creative design ideas while adhering to design standards.
As technology evolves, so too has our approach to web design. The fluid layout concept aligns more closely with the dynamic nature of modern devices and user expectations.
Final Thoughts
While there are countless laws in UX design, these four laws stand out as the pillars for creating user-friendly and efficient interfaces. These principles help guide crucial website design decisions, promoting ease of use and better user experiences for websites, but also things like product design.
“The beauty of UX is not in novel complexity but in effortless simplicity.”
If you are interested in exploring even more about UX laws and their applications, check out Laws of UX. Look through the extensive examples and discover additional best practices to elevate your website design game.
If you’ve found this helpful, let us know and share your experiences with these laws in practice. Let’s continue crafting exceptional designs for websites and digital products!
Until next time, happy website designing! Remember, if you’re going it alone DIYing, or you need help with Website Design, we’d love to help you. Get in touch!
