We just concluded the Foundational Phase of the Fellowship and a Challenge Week started on Monday, the 21st of November to test what we were taught during the Foundational Phase of the Fellowship. The Challenge Week has really been challenging (I'll talk about the details in a different article). This article is the final task for the challenge week.

An understanding of psychology - specifically the psychology behind how users behave and interact with digital interfaces - is perhaps the single most valuable non-design skill a designer can have. - Excerpt from Laws of UX by Jon Yablonski.

Every designer understands the role User Experience (UX) plays in designing a successful product. Aesthetics(User Interface - UI) also play an important role, but a visually pleasing product with a poor user experience would not survive in the long run cause users would lose interest after a while if they find it difficult to use.

In this article, we would get to understand what User Experience (UX) is and also understand a few Laws of UX thats are very useful, especially to designers.

What Is User Experience (UX)?

Career Foundry defines User Experience (UX) as any interaction a user has with a product or a service.

"User Experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services and its products."  - Don Norman, Cognitive Scientist and User Experience Architect

User Experience (UX) is significant because it aims to fulfill the user's needs. The key to an excellent User Experience is to understand consumers' needs and build products that are easy for people to use, getting them from point A to point B in the most natural and enjoyable ways.

Now that we understand User Experience (UX) and its significance in building a successful product, we would learn about my four favorite Laws of UX - their origin, key takeaways and a short summary of each law - that are important to every designer.

JAKOB'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.

Origin

Jakob's Law was coined by Jakob Nielsen, a User Advocate and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group which he co-founded with Dr. Donald A. Norman (former VP of research at Apple Computer). Dr. Nielsen established the 'discount usability engineering' movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces and has invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation.

Key Takeaways

• Users often project their expectations from one well-known product onto another that seems to be identical.

• By utilizing pre-existing mental models, we can design better user interfaces that allow users to concentrate on their activities rather than learning new models.

• When making changes, minimize discord by empowering users to continue using a familiar version for a limited time.

Summary

Do not try to reinvent the wheel and end up confusing users. For example, everyone is aware that the back button of a mobile application is located at the top left corner of the screen. When designing, do not try to place your back button in a different position cause users would be confused.

HICK'S LAW

The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.

Origin

Hick’s Law (or the Hick-Hyman Law) is named after a British and an American psychologist team of William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman. In 1952, this pair set out to examine the relationship between the number of stimuli present and an individual’s reaction time to any given stimulus. As you would expect, the more stimuli to choose from, the longer it takes the user to make a decision on which one to interact with. Users bombarded with choices have to take time to interpret and decide, giving them work they don’t want.

Key Takeaways

• When quick decisions are required, limit the number of options.

• Reduce cognitive load by breaking complicated tasks into smaller segments.

• Recommendations should be highlighted to avoid overloading consumers.

• Reduce the cognitive load on new users by using progressive onboarding.

Summary

Simplify the decision making process of your users by reducing the number of choice they have to a reasonable amount. This law is not trying to eliminate the decision making process but to make it seamless and easy.

AESTHETIC-USABILITY EFFECT

Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable.

Origin

The aesthetic-usability effect was first studied in the field of human–computer interaction in 1995. Researchers Masaaki Kurosu and Kaori Kashimura from the Hitachi Design Center tested 26 variations of an ATM UI, asking the 252 study participants to rate each design on ease of use, as well as aesthetic appeal. They found a stronger correlation between the participants’ ratings of aesthetic appeal and perceived ease of use than the correlation between their ratings of aesthetic appeal and actual ease of use. Kurosu and Kashimura concluded that users are strongly influenced by the aesthetics of any given interface, even when they try to evaluate the underlying functionality of the system.

Key Takeaways

• People's minds respond favorably to appealing designs, which makes them think the design truly functions better.

• When a product or service has an attractive design, users are willing to deal with small usability flaws.

• A design's aesthetic appeal might hide usability concerns and keep them from coming to light during usability testing.

Summary

Users are allured and fascinated by beautiful interfaces so as designers, we should not neglect the importance of an aesthetically pleasing Visual Interface because the Interface attracts the users first and an awesome User Experience would make them stay or come back.

TESLER'S LAW (LAW OF CONSERVATION OF COMPLEXITY)

For any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced.

Origin

While working for Xerox PARC in the mid-1980s, Larry Tesler realized that the way users interact with applications was just as important as the application itself. The book Designing for Interaction by Dan Saffer, includes an interview with Larry Tesler that describes the law of conservation of complexity. The interview is popular among user experience and interaction designers. Larry Tesler argues that, in most cases, an engineer should spend an extra week reducing the complexity of an application versus making millions of users spend an extra minute using the program because of the extra complexity. However, Bruce Tognazzini proposes that people resist reductions to the amount of complexity in their lives. Thus, when an application is simplified, users begin attempting more complex tasks.

Key Takeaways

• People's minds respond favorably to appealing designs, which makes them think the design truly functions better.

• Be careful not to simplify interfaces so much that they become abstract.

Summary

There are a few cases where the steps required to successfully interact with a product are quite complex but they cannot be reduced because they are very important for a successful and smooth interaction with a product.

Thank you so much for reading my article. I hope you enjoyed it and learnt a few new things. Please do not forget to like, leave a comment and share it. You could also connect with me via Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram. Thank you. ❤ & 💡

References

• My best friend, Google

• Laws of UX Website

• Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products & Services by Jon Yablonski

• Career Foundry