Laws of UX
Jon Yoblinski
What I like
Quick read with salient, easy-to-digest chapters
Contents contextualized with good examples and supporting images
Makes biases simpler to understand, works as a really good primer on ones with immediate benefits
What’s missing
Some laws in this book are pretty common knowledge in UX
Would be nice to see how all of these concepts work together instead of just investigating them individually
Review
I found this book as a recommendation on Amazon. Laws are bendable truths, which come in handy for making quick design decisions. Laws of UX helps define ten laws that allow us to make decisions based on patterns in human behavior, covering origins of where the laws came from, examples, associated psychology principles, and implications for design. Laws act as rules, so by implementing them or not implementing them comes a set of trade-offs. Laws also have a lot of complexity in when/when not to use them, especially since in this context they are based around human biases and technology. There are probably millions of other laws out there at higher-level decision points, but for design I can see how these have immediate utility. However it’s not a band-aid book, it’s not a tell-all about UX or all of the laws in the world. But it could be a great primer on ones that are very influential in design. There’s a lot of great history in here about human-computer interaction research, so I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about some laws of human-centered design.
Learnings
Systems have inherent complexity that cannot be reduced. This law is interesting to me because if complexity is reduced from the frontend that usually means it will be added to the backend of technology or somewhere else in the experience. This is a good thing to keep in mind when designing systems because illusions about a problem seemingly being resolved, may have caused issues elsewhere. Like quicksand. This is sometimes referred to as Tesler’s Law.
Designers have the responsibility of making interactions with things ergonomically satisfying. By implementing actions Ike proper button size and positioning, designing for efficient cursor or finger (or whatever output) movement to complete an action, and leaning on existing conventions, designers can make interfaces less physically taxing. This concept is sometimes referred to as Fitts Law.
Generally speaking, people don’t behave like machines. They act irrationally, have varying sets of needs, different lifestyles, and make abrupt decisions. What this means that we as designers should be prepared to accept and respond to whatever input the user provides. It also means we should be liberal on the affordances or inputs we design, as to not open up unnecessary spaces for errors. This principle is sometimes referred to as Postel’s Law.
The concept of resilience is a systems ability to handle a variety of inputs while maintaining a steady state.
People are bombarded with sensory information all the time and it is hard to figure out where to place our attention. That said, we are more likely to give our attention to things that are different or unusual, than things that are aligned with a pattern. Moreover people have a lot of biases to help them automatically screen out stimuli that are not helpful- such as banner (people ignore things that look like adds) or change blindness (people may not notice a change to information).
As designers we can make elements stand out that require attention. This is referred to as the Von Restorff Effect
People are more likely to judge a product as more usable, and less erroneous, the more aesthetically pleasing it is. On the flip side, the less aesthetic something is, the more people will pay attention to its flaws. This concept is known as the aesthetic usability effect.
People encounter peaks and dips in experiences. A study in 1993 by Daniel Kahneman involved two groups, one that submerged their hands in 14C for 30s and another that did the same thing, but kept their hand in the water for 30s longer as it warmed back up. What they found was that people were more willing to repeat the second trial, and one of the reasons seemed to be for the memory. What’s important about this for designers is that we have the ability to track the peaks in experiences and design around them.
From the user’s perspective, the peak-end-rule is a cognitive bias. It is related to the recency effect which is a bias where we pay more attention to elements at the front or back of a list. This may play into availability effect as well, where we preserve answers in working memory from previous questions. What this all means is that when it comes to making choices, we may be swayed by the positivity of the memory, and we should design for a good peak end.
Resilience within an experience is its ability to input complexities of human emotion and output results consistently, hopefully with a sweet ending.
Sameness is somethings similarity to another thing. When it comes to using things, this means we can use something the same as something else. When we build experiences alongside (not against) previously existing mental models, they become easier to understand. There is an alignment between the user and the product. This concept is often referred to as Jakob’s Law, which is centered around designing around familiarity and convention for improving the user experience.
Speed in response is often associated with usability. Generally people expect a software system to provide a response within 400ms to their inputs in order for it to be perceived as fluid. Moreover, if a response time is too fast then it can cause users to miss important information. If a system really does take a long time to process a response, we can use animations and loading bars, or even lazy losing, to give the impression of system feedback. Generally speed is an overarching design tenet that people expect from all of their technology. The less time it takes for a response, the more control people feel they have.
In practice, there are a few things we can do to make decision-making simpler and reduce decision-making time:
1. Reduce the number of options.2. Reduce time, for example at high intervals.
3. Understand the goals and the constraints of users.
B. F. Skinner created a process called “operant conditioning” which showed how behaviors could be learned or modified by creating an association between a particular behavior and a consequence. Skinner created Skinner Boxes to teach animals to perform desired actions in response to specific stimuli on their environment. These behaviors were modified through positive or negative reinforcement. It was found that unpredictable patterns of reward caused animals to engage in reward-seeking actions more.