Laws of UX PDF

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WRITTEN AND DESIGNED BY JON YABLONSKI
PUBLISHED BY PIP DECKS®

INTRODUCTION
As humans, we have an underlying ‘blueprint’ for how we

perceive and process the world around us, and the study of
psychology helps us decipher this blueprint. Designers can
use this knowledge to build more intuitive, human-centered
products and experiences. Instead of forcing users to adapt
to the design of a product or experience, we can use some key
principles from psychology as a guide for designing in a way
that is adapted to people.
HOW TO USE LAWS OF UX
Connect the cards
Start with the UX Theory cards as a starting point for

connecting related psychology concepts, interaction principles
and UX methods such as Peak-End Rule > Cognitive Bias >
Conceptual Model > Journey Mapping.
Pair your design principles with UX Theories
This strengthens the connection between what the principle is

seeking to accomplish and the psychological reasoning behind it.
Create a shared collective knowledge and vocabulary
Better articulate your design decisions to peers and

stakeholders by tying them back to psychology.
LAWSOFUX.COM © JON YABLONSKI, 2022

INTERACTION PRINCIPLE
Discoverability
The ability to discover what a system does, how it
works, and what operations are possible.
RELATED | CONCEPTUAL MODEL USABILITY TEST

Discoverability
Discoverability is key to learning what’s possible
It defines the ease at which users can find new content

or features and directly affects their ability to complete
specific tasks. It results from the appropriate application of
affordances, signifiers, constraints, mappings and feedback.
Ensure clear focal points
Discoverability is supported through clear focal points,

visual hierarchy, prioritizing the visibility of critical elements,
navigation systems that are easy to access and understand,
and using iconography that holds universal meaning.
Distinction: discoverability vs findability
Findability refers to the ability to find content or a functionality

that users already know or assume is present. Discoverability,
on the other hand, refers to the ability to discovery new content
or a functionality that users are not already aware of.
Origin
This fundamental principle of interaction was defined by

researcher, professor and author Don Norman and can be
applied to make products and services efficient, effective and
delightful to use. It results from the appropriate application
of five fundamental psychological concepts: affordances,
signifiers, constraints, mappings and feedback.
Affordances
Define what actions are possible with an object or
interface based on the capabilities of the user.
RELATED | SIGNIFIERS USABILITY TEST

Affordances
Affordances help you know what action to take
Help users achieve their goal by connecting what an object

does according to their Conceptual Model of what that
object should do.
The form of the interactive element implies the function
Affordances help people figure out what actions are possible

without the need for labels or instructions. For example,
buttons afford pressing because they often appear to be
raised from the surface, or they are styled differently from other
content often in addition to text that implies an action.
Distinction: signifier vs affordance
Affordances are the actions that are possible, while signifiers

communicate where the action should take place.
Origin

Signifiers
Signifiers are visible or audible clues that
communicate the appropriate action within a system.
RELATED | AFFORDANCES USABILITY TEST

Signifiers
Signifiers provide important cues
They show how and where people can interact with an

interface and help people see the affordances of an object.
Apply signifiers to communicate the ‘what’
Use signals such as labels, arrows, icons and sounds to lead

users to take relevant actions. For example, a horizontal bar
lets people know that a door should be pushed to open, while
a handle lets them know to pull it.
Distinction: signifier vs affordance
Affordances are the actions that are possible, while signifiers

communicate where the action should take place.
Origin

Feedback
System responses that makes it clear to the user what
action has been taken and what has been accomplished.
RELATED | MAPPING USABILITY TEST

Feedback
Feedback communicates the current state of a system or object
Feedback allows the user to feel in control and take

appropriate actions to reach their goal, as well as building
trust that the system works as intended.
Good design gives clear feedback
Clear feedback prevents discomfort or difficulty. For example,

a loading bar gives information that ‘behind the scene’
progress is being made. Without it, a user may get frustrated
that nothing appears to be happening. In some cases,
when things load too quickly, fake progress bars can create
reassurance that something did happen!
Avoid ambiguity. Be clear and specific.
The key is to design the experience to never leave the

user guessing about what action they have taken and the
consequence of doing so.
Origin

Mapping
The relationship between the elements of two sets
of things.
RELATED | CONCEPTUAL MODEL USABILITY TEST

Mapping
Mapping helps you understand what controls will do
When controls are mapped to the layout of the devices being

controlled, it is easier to determine how to use them.
For example, rotating a steering wheel clockwise or counter-

clockwise steers the vehicle right or left. Or the layout of a
rooms’ switches are mapped to the location of ceiling lights
they control.
Natural mapping
Spatial analogies, such as moving an interactive element up

or down in order to increase or decrease the value of another
element, will decrease the time it takes to understand it.
Origin
Mapping is a technical term that was borrowed by researcher,

professor and author Don Norman from mathematics to refer
to the relationship between the elements of two sets of things.
It is one of six concepts required to support discoverability
and understanding.
Constraints
Physical, semantic, cultural and logical constraints
guide our actions and aid in interpretation.
RELATED | COGNITIVE LOAD USABILITY TEST

Constraints
Constraints give us clues
They allow us to determine a course of action by limiting the

possible actions available to us.
Physical constraints
Restrict the possible operations; for example, a mouse cursor

cannot be moved outside the screen. This boundary prevents
a user from losing their visual anchor.
Semantic constraints
Provide clues to where actions can be performed; for instance,

a socket is restricted in where the plug pins can be inserted. The
constraint of only being inserted one way eliminates user error.
Cultural constraints
Social conventions, such as waiting in a queue to be served,

create a signifier of where to stand.
Logical constraints
Help determine the alternatives; for example, scroll bars

indicate that content exceeds the viewport, and that we
should scroll.
Origin
Constraints are one part of the fundamental principles of

interaction, defined by American researcher, professor and
author Don Norman, which can be applied to make products
and services efficient, effective and delightful to use.
Conceptual Model
An explanation, usually highly simplified, of
how something works, which is formed through
experience, training and instruction.
RELATED | DISCOVERABILITY USER INTERVIEW

Conceptual Model
Conceptual models provide understanding
They enable people to make associations with things that

are familiar in order to understand how something works and
what to do if something goes wrong.
Universal ideas we all share
Examples include the files, folders and app icons found on

computers. The universality of these images makes them
easier to understand and use. For more abstract concepts, like
deleting, we use visual metaphors, such as the trash icon. We
understand the concept of throwing something in the trash, so
we can use that to represent the idea of deleting items.
Mismatched conceptual models cause frustration
In the absence of a good conceptual model, we act rashly and lack

appreciation of why a system works the way it does, or become
frustrated if something behaves differently to how we expect it to.
Origin
Part of the fundamental principles of interaction, defined

by American researcher, professor and author Don Norman,
which can be applied to make products and services efficient,
effective and delightful to use.
UX METHOD
Card Sorting
A research technique in which users organize topics
into groups to create an information architecture that
suits their expectations.
RELATED | HICK’S LAW CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY

Card Sorting
1. Gather
Gather the items or topics that the participants will be asked

to organize. These items should represent the main content
within your information architecture, such as items in a
navigation or products in your catalog. Write each item on an
individual card.
2. Sort
Ask the participants to sort the items one at a time into groups
that make sense to them. Encourage them to think out loud, as
this can give you valuable insight into their thought process.
3. Label
Once the topics have been sorted, ask the participant to label
each group with the term they think best describes it. This
step reveals what each participant’s mental model is and
will be helpful when determining what to eventually label
categories within your information architecture.
4. Dig deeper
Ask the participants to explain their rationale for each of

the groupings they created. This helps you uncover why
each participant made the decisions they did, identify any
difficulties they experienced, and gather their thoughts on any
topics that remain unsorted.
UX METHOD
Design Principles
An agreed-upon set of guidelines that help frame how
a design team approaches and solves problems.
RELATED | AFFINITY MAPPING

Design Principles
1. Rally the team together
Bring together the team. The more people you can get
involved, the easier it will be to ensure widespread adoption.
2. Define the criteria of your principles
On sticky notes, ask the group to write down the criteria the
principles must meet to be valuable. Stick this up so its visible
for the next step. For example: must be specific, focussed
on user needs, and scalable across systems. Also consider:
are these principles for your service, interaction or content
design? Or should they encompass all of these areas?
3. Diverge
For the next 10 minutes, ask each team member to write

as many design principles as they can. For example, ‘use
inclusive language’, or ‘animation must imply how the UI can
be interacted with, or it shouldn’t be used’.
4. Converge
In turn, ask each team member to share their ideas. Stick them up
on a wall and group into themes as you go. Next, with three votes
each, have everyone dot vote the themes they feel resonate most.
5. Refine and Apply
As a group, stress-test the principles by applying them to existing

or hypothetical new design work. Consolidate the principles
where possible and refine how they are articulated until they are
clear and specific. Make a plan for how to share these principles
so they are always considered in your design practice.
UX METHOD
Journey Mapping
A visualization of the process that a user goes
through in order to accomplish a goal.
RELATED | PEAK-END RULE AFFINITY MAPPING

Journey Mapping
Lens
Describe the user, their motivations and expectations within the

specific scenario. For example, Jane (user) is using a ride-share
service app to order a ride (scenario) that she expects to arrive
at her exact location in 10 minutes or less (expectation).
Experience
Illustrate the actions and emotions of the user across a timeline.

Use the Y axis to denote level of delight and frustration (as shown
by the dotted line in the image above).
Insights
Identify opportunities to improve the experience. For example,

give a real-time location of the driver to reduce the pain of
waiting (opportunity). This feature will need to be developed by
the product team (internal ownership) and can be monitored
with post-ride ratings (metric).
UX METHOD
User Personas
A fictional representation of users whose
characteristics and goals represent that of a larger
group of users.
RELATED | JAKOB’S LAW CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY

User Personas
Info: make personas memorable for your team
Items such as a photo, memorable tagline, name, age, and

occupation are all relevant for the information section of a
persona. The idea here is to create a realistic representation of the
members of a specific group within your target audience, so this
data should be reflective of the similarities they share.
Details: outline behaviours, motivations, goals and tasks.
Build empathy and align focus on the characteristics that impact

what is being designed. A bio creates a deeper narrative around
the persona. Include behavioral qualities such as motivations and
goals, and frustrations or sources of joy that this particular group
might have. Additional details could include tasks the user might
perform while using the product or feature.
Insights: include attitudes, quotes and additional context
The insights section frames the attitude of the user. It adds an additional
layer of context that provides further definition of the specific persona
and their mindset. It often includes direct quotes from user research.
UX METHOD
Usability Test
An observational method to uncover problems in a
design, discover opportunities that exist, and learn
more about the behaviors and preferences of users.
RELATED | JAKOB’S LAW AFFINITY MAPPING

Usability Test
Recruit real users
Target and recruit representative users of the product or

service you’re building. Don’t rely solely on usability data from
your own your team or company unless what you’re designing
is intended exclusively for them.
Simulate real tasks
Ask participants to perform realistic tasks using your design.

They can be very specific or open-ended, depending on the
goals of the test.
Observe and listen
While you are running the test, make sure to listen intently and
avoid biasing the participants. Remember to remain neutral.
Avoid leading questions. Ensure participants understand that
they are helping you test the design and you are not testing
them. It can be tempting to give them the answer if they get
stuck, but it’s more insightful to see how they overcome it.
Set and measure performance metrics
Be sure to measure both the speed and ease at which

participants manage the task in addition to what they say
about it. How well participants perform doesn’t always match
their subjective experience of doing so.
UX METHOD
User Interview
A UX research technique during which a researcher
asks one user questions about a particular topic in
order to gain insights.
RELATED | JAKOB’S LAW AFFINITY MAPPING

User Interview
Define the goal of the interview
What exactly are you hoping to learn? Or what are you trying
to understand better? Ensure you collect valuable information
for your design by making the goal concise and related to a
specific aspect of the users’ behavior or attitudes.
Prepare your discussion guide
Be sure to prepare questions beforehand that focus around

the goal of the interview. Don’t be afraid to ask relevant
follow-up questions based on the participant’s responses. A
natural, free-flowing conversation can lead to unexpected,
fruitful insights. A general guide of themes to discuss can
sometimes be more useful than a list of rigid questions.
Build rapport with the interviewee
Ask them if they’ve done anything like this before. Reassure

them it’s no big deal and you’ll just be having a chat. People
are more likely to open up and provide valuable information
once they are relaxed and trust the interviewer.
Avoid leading questions
Don’t ask closed questions that are answerable with a ‘yes’

or ‘no’, or questions that are too vague to get specific and
valuable responses. The goals is to elicit rich, unbiased
answers from the interviewee. Open questions start with
‘what’, ‘how’, ‘when’ – or ‘tell me about X’.
UX METHOD
Affinity Mapping
A method for categorizing and sorting qualitative data
or observations using an affinity diagram in order to
identify themes and gain insights.
RELATED | USER INTERVIEW

Affinity Mapping
1. Record
Record the research from user interviews, user tests or other

research method on individual sticky notes. The notes can
include anything that’s helpful: general information about
the subject of the research, observations, quotes, common
oversights, and use cases.
2. Identify
Identify patterns in the notes and group those that are related.
Don’t over think it — this step is about understanding the data
as a whole and groupings can always change.
3. Label
Once you’ve organized the notes into related groups, give each
a name based on the theme of that group. For example ‘people
often did X when attempting to accomplish Y’.
4. Insights
Identify key insights from the themes. What story do the

themes tell as a whole? Once these are defined, summarize
them and provide evidence from your research to support each.
Don’t forget to include design action items related to each!
UX METHOD
UX Survey
A qualitative method of collecting data about a
user’s interactions and experience with a website or
digital product.
RELATED | USABILITY TEST CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY

UX Survey
1. Set expectations
Start by giving participants an idea of what you will be asking

them, how much time it will take, and how to get in contact if
they have any issues with the survey.
2. Questions
Keep questions as short and simple as possible in order to

increase the completion rate and quality of feedback from
participants. Questions should be a mix of prompts that require
participants to answer from a fixed number of possible response,
prompts that allow users to respond however they want.
Additionally, be sure to only ask one question at a time!
3. Bias
Avoid biasing the participants with questions that lead or

prime them to respond a specific way in order to get more
meaningful data. For example, instead of asking “what
problems did you experience with [feature]”, ask them to
“describe your experience with [feature]”.
4. Ease-in
Start with broad, general questions that are easy to answer to

ease them into the survey, before moving on to more thought-
provoking questions or those that require more mental effort.
PSYCHOLOGY CONCEPT
Contextual Inquiry
A field study that involves in-depth observation and
interviews of a small sample of users to gain a robust
understanding of work practices and behaviors.
RELATED | USER INTERVIEW

Contextual Inquiry
1. Introduction
Begin by introducing yourself, stating the goals of the inquiry,

and communicating what the participant can expect. Be sure
to let participants know their feedback is confidential!
2. Inform
Next up is the transition to the interview. Inform the participant

that you will watch while they perform their work, and to expect
questions whenever you see something interesting to discuss.
3. Explore
During the interview, be sure to watch and learn while

stopping the participant to discuss observations that you’d
like to explore further or clarify. Ask open-ended questions
that let the participant give you details about why they took a
certain action.
4. Clarify
End by asking any outstanding questions and summarizing your

interpretation of the observed processes in order to get final
clarifications and correct your understanding.
5. Synthesize
Synthesize the data collected during contextual inquiries by

identifying important patterns and themes (e.g. affinity mapping).
PSYCHOLOGY CONCEPT
Cognitive Load
The amount of mental resources needed to
understand and interact with an interface.
RELATED | HICK’S LAW AFFORDANCES

Cognitive Load
Our brains have a limited amount of processing power
When the amount of information coming in exceeds the space

we have available in our brain, we struggle to keep up — tasks
become more difficult, details are missed, and we begin to
feel overwhelmed.
Intrinsic cognitive load
Refers to the effort required by users to carry around

information relevant to their goal, absorb new information and
keep track of their goals. For example, we can only hold three
or four items in our working memory at once.
Extraneous cognitive load
Refers to the mental processing that takes up resources but

doesn't help users understand the content of an interface (e.g.
distracting or unnecessary design elements).
Origin
Cognitive load theory was developed in the late 1980s by

John Sweller out of a problem-solving study. In many ways it
was an expansion on the information processing theories of
George Miller. Sweller argued that instructional design can be
used to reduce cognitive load in learners, culminating in his
1988 publication of “Cognitive Load Theory, Learning Difficulty,
and Instructional Design”.
PSYCHOLOGY CONCEPT
Cognitive Bias
Systematic errors of thinking or rationality in
judgement that influence our perception of the world
and our decision-making ability.
RELATED | PEAK-END RULE CONCEPTUAL MODEL

Cognitive Bias
Cognitive biases increase our efficiency
Rather than thinking through every situation, we conserve

mental energy by developing rules of thumb to make decisions
based on past experience. These mental shortcuts enable
us to make quick decisions without needing to analyze every
detail. But they can also influence our decision-making
processes and judgement without our awareness.
Example: confirmation bias
We have a tendency to seek out, interpret, and recall

information in a way that confirms our preconceived notions
and ideas. This is known as confirmation bias, and it can make
having a logical discussion about a polarizing hot-button issue
with someone incredibly difficult.
Building awareness
Understanding our own biases may not eliminate them

from our decision making – but it can help us identify them.
Being aware can safeguard us against fallacious reasoning,
unintentional discrimination or costly decisions.
Origin
Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the notion of

cognitive biases in 1972 after they observed people’s inability
to reason intuitively with greater orders of magnitude. In a
series of replicable experiments, Tversky, Kahneman and their
colleagues demonstrated that human judgement and decision
making is seperate from rational choice theory.
PSYCHOLOGY CONCEPT
Cognitive Dissonance
When a user is confronted with an interface or
affordance that appears to be intuitive but delivers
unexpected results.
RELATED | MENTAL MODEL JAKOB’S LAW

Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance can negatively affect user experience
This can cause frustration and lead to the user abandoning a

task, or leaving the experience altogether.
Seek out frustrating and confusing steps
Prevent cognitive friction by conducting user interviews to

understand a user’s mental model. Create task flows to
ensure coherent steps, and design easy-to-use information
architectures with Card Sorting.
Evaluate and test to create a smooth journey
Expert evaluations and usability testing can also highlight

problems in a design and uncover solutions. When a great user
experience feels easy, it’s because no steps in the journey
were confusing or difficult.
Origin
Cognitive dissonance was established by Leon Festinger in

When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a
Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World
(1956) and A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957). In
these works, Festinger proposed that human beings strive
for internal psychological consistency to function mentally in
the real world. People who experience internal inconsistency
tend to become psychologically uncomfortable and motivated
to reduce cognitive dissonance.
PSYCHOLOGY CONCEPT
Mental Model
An explanation of someone’s thought process about
how something works in the real world.
RELATED | JAKOB’S LAW CONCEPTUAL MODEL

Mental Model
Match designs to the users’ existing mental models
This enables them to easily transfer their knowledge from one

product or experience to another, without the need to first
take the time to understand how the new system works.
Meet users’ expectations. Subvert them at your peril.
Take ecommerce websites, which use consistent patterns and

conventions such product cards, virtual carts and checkout
flows in order to conform to users’ expectations. Radically
redesigning these elements or removing these concepts
altogether for the sake of novelty runs the risk of alienating
users.
Understand how your users think
Shrinking the gap between our own mental models and those
of the users is one of the biggest challenges as a UX designer.
To achieve this goal we use a variety of user research methods
such as user interviews, personas, journey maps and empathy
maps.
Origin
The term ‘mental model’ is believed to have originated in the

1943 book The Nature of Explanation by Kenneth Craik. Since
this time, there has been much discussion and use of the idea
in human–computer interaction and usability.
PSYCHOLOGY CONCEPT
Chunking
Chunking is a process by which individual pieces of
an information set are broken down and then grouped
together in a meaningful whole.
RELATED | MILLER’S LAW MAPPING

Chunking
Chunking
Chunking helps users to easily scan and identify information

that aligns with their goals and process that information to
complete their task more quickly.
Grouping
Structuring content into visually distinct groups with a clear

hierarchy enables designers to align information with how
people evaluate and process content.
Content relationships
Chunking can be used to help users understand underlying

relationships by grouping content into distinctive modules,
applying rules to separate content, and providing hierarchy.
Origin
The word chunking comes from a famous 1956 paper by

George A. Miller, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus
Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information”.
At a time when information theory was beginning to be applied
in psychology, Miller observed that some human cognitive tasks
fit the model of a ‘channel capacity’ characterized by a roughly
constant capacity in bits, but short-term memory did not.
PSYCHOLOGY CONCEPT
Selective Attention
The process of focusing our attention only to a subset
of the stimuli in the environment — usually those
related to our goals.
RELATED | DOHERTY THRESHOLD SIGNIFIERS

Selective Attention
People filter out information that isn’t relevant
To maintain focus on the task at hand we must guide users’

attention. Prevent them from being overwhelmed or distracted
by helping them find the information or action they need at the
right moment.
Banner blindness
Website visitors ignore banner content that resembles ads,

or appears in locations traditionally dedicated to ads. By not
styling or placing content to look like ads, you have a higher
chance of attention being paid to it.
Change blindness
A perceptual phenomenon occurs when significant changes

in an interface go unnoticed due to limitations of our attention
and the lack of strong cues. Avoid this by analyzing your
design for any competing changes that may happen at the
same time and that may divert attention from each other.
Origin
An early theory of attention was Donald Broadbent’s filter model.

Built on the research by Cherry Collins, Broadbent used an
information-processing metaphor to describe human attention.
He suggested that our capacity to process information is limited,
and our selection of information to process takes place early on
in the perceptual process.
PSYCHOLOGY CONCEPT
Analysis Paralysis
The inability to make a decision due to over-
thinking a problem.
RELATED | HICK’S LAW AFFORDANCES

Analysis Paralysis
Too many options hurts users’ decision-making ability
How they feel about the experience as a whole can be

significantly impacted as a result.
Optimizing for choice
Avoid analysis paralysis by keeping the decision-making

process in mind. Avoid overwhelming users by only showing
one thing at a time (e.g. featured product), or by providing tools
for narrowing down choices up front (e.g. search and filtering).
Optimizing for comparison
When comparison is necessary, we can avoid analysis

paralysis by enabling side-by-side comparison of related
items and options that require a decision (e.g. pricing tiers).
Origin
The idea of analysis paralysis has been expressed through

narrative a number of times, beginning as far back the ancient
fable The Fox and the Cat which was included in Aesop’s Fables.
The two words first appeared together in an 1803 pronouncing
dictionary and later editions stating how those words are
pronounced similarly. In 1956, Charles R. Schwartz wrote the
article “The Return-on-Investment Concept as a Tool for Decision
Making” in Changing Patterns And Concepts In Management
stating, “We will do less guessing; avoid the danger of becoming
extinct by instinct; and, by the adoption of one uniform evaluation
guide, escape succumbing to paralysis by analysis.”
PSYCHOLOGY CONCEPT
Flow
The mental state in which a person performing an activity
is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full
involvement and enjoyment of process of the activity.
RELATED | DOHERTY THRESHOLD DISCOVERABILITY

Flow
Flow results from immersive and engaging user experiences
A flow state occurs when there is a balance between the

difficulty of a task and the level of skill required to complete it.
It’s characterized by intense and focussed concentration on
the present, combined with a sense of total control.
Designing for flow
We can build flow into our designs by providing feedback so

that the user knows what action has been taken and what has
been accomplished. Optimizing for task efficiency is key for
avoiding disengagement with the interface. This is achieved by
building a responsive system, removing friction, and making
content and features available for intuitive discovery.
Finding balance
A task that’s too difficult leads to heightened frustration, while a

task that’s too easy can lead to boredom. Finding the right balance
requires matching the challenge with the user’s skill level.
Origin
Flow was coined by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in

1975 and has been widely referred to across a variety of fields
(and is particularly well recognized in occupational therapy),
though the concept has been claimed to have existed for
thousands of years under other names.
PSYCHOLOGY CONCEPT
Short-Term Memory
The capacity to store a small amount of information
in mind and keep it readily available for a short
period of time.
RELATED | AFFORDANCES

Short-Term Memory
Short-term memory is limited in capacity and duration
We are limited to being able to hold ~7 chunks of information

in our short-term memory at any given moment with each
chunk fading after 20–30 seconds. We use it to keep track of
information in order to achieve tasks, but we often have trouble
remembering what information we’ve already seen. Designers
must be mindful of this limit when displaying information to
users and ensure it’s both necessary and relevant.
Prioritize recognition over recall
Our brains are good at recognizing something we’ve seen

before, but not at keeping new information ready to be used.
We can support this by making it clear what information has
already been viewed (e.g. visually differentiating visited links
and providing breadcrumbs links).
Place burden of memory on the system, not the user
We can lessen the burden of memorizing critical information

by carrying it over from screen to screen when necessary (e.g.
comparison tables that make comparing multiple items easy).
Origin
Memory is believed to be divided into short-term and long-

term storage as early as the 19th century. The classical model
of memory, developed in the 1960s, assumed that memories
move from short-term to long-term storage over time. This
model is referred to as the ‘modal model’ and has been most
famously detailed by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968.
UX THEORY
Aesthetic-Usability
Effect
Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as
design that’s more usable.
RELATED | DOHERTY THRESHOLD SELECTIVE ATTENTION

Aesthetic-Usability Effect
Aesthetics
An aesthetically pleasing design creates a positive response in

people’s brains and leads them to believe the design actually
works better than other, equally usable, (but less visually
appealing) designs.
Tolerance
People are more tolerant of minor usability issues when the

design of a product or service is aesthetically pleasing.
Usability problems
Visually pleasing design can mask usability problems and

prevent issues from being discovered during usability testing.
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.
UX THEORY
Doherty Threshold
Productivity soars when a computer and its users
interact at a pace (<400ms) that ensures that neither
has to wait on the other.
RELATED | AESTHETIC-USABILITY EFFECT FLOW

Doherty Threshold
System feedback
Provide system feedback within 400 ms in order to keep

users’ attention and increase productivity.
Perceived performance
Use perceived performance to improve response time and

reduce the perception of waiting.
Animation
Animation is one way to visually engage people while loading

or processing is happening in the background.
Progress bars
Progress bars make wait times tolerable, regardless of their

accuracy.
Purposeful delay
Purposefully adding a delay to a process can actually increase

its perceived value and instill a sense of trust, even when the
process itself actually takes much less time.
Origin
In 1982, Walter J. Doherty and Ahrvind J. Thadani published a

research paper that set the requirement for computer response
time to be 400 ms, not 2,000 ms (2 seconds), which had been
the previous standard. When a human’s command was executed
and returned an answer in under 400 ms, it was deemed to
exceed the Doherty threshold.
UX THEORY
Fitts’ Law
The time to acquire a target is a function of the
distance to and size of the target.
RELATED | HICK’S LAW COGNITIVE LOAD

Fitts’ Law
Size
Touch targets should be large enough for users to

accurately select.
Spacing
Touch targets should have ample spacing between them.
Placement
Touch targets should be placed in areas of an interface that

allow them to be easily accessed.
Origin
In 1954, psychologist Paul Fitts, examining the human

motor system, showed that the time required to move to a
target depends on the distance to it, yet relates inversely to
its size. By his law, fast movements and small targets result
in greater error rates, due to the speed-accuracy trade-off.
Although multiple variants of Fitts’ law exist, all encompass
this idea. Fitts’ law is widely applied in design. For example,
this law influenced the convention of making interactive
buttons large (especially on finger-operated mobile devices);
smaller buttons are more difficult (and time consuming) to
click. Likewise, the distance between a user’s task/attention
area and the task-related button should be kept as short as
possible.
UX THEORY
Goal-Gradient Effect
The tendency to approach a goal increases with
proximity to the goal.
RELATED | Z E I G A R N I K E F F ECT SELECTIVE ATTENTION

Goal-Gradient Effect
Proximity is an accelerant
The closer users are to completing a task, the faster they work
towards reaching it.
Motivate
Providing artificial progress towards a goal will help to ensure

users have the motivation to complete that task.
Progress
Provide a clear indication of progress in order to motivate

users to complete tasks.
Origin
The goal-gradient hypothesis, originally proposed by the

behaviorist Clark Hull in 1932, states that the tendency to
approach a goal increases with proximity to the goal. In a
classic experiment that tests this hypothesis, Hull (1934)
found that rats in a straight alley ran progressively faster as
they proceeded from the starting box to the food. Although the
goal-gradient hypothesis has been investigated extensively
with animals (e.g., Anderson 1933; Brown 1948; for a review,
see Heilizer 1977), its implications for human behavior and
decision making are understudied. Furthermore, this issue
has important theoretical and practical implications for
intertemporal consumer behavior in reward programs (RPs)
and other types of motivational systems (e.g. Deighton 2000;
Hsee, Yu, and Zhang 2003; Kivetz 2003; Lal and Bell 2003).
UX THEORY
Hick’s Law
The time it takes to make a decision increases with
the number and complexity of choices.
RELATED | FITTS’ LAW COGNITIVE LOAD

Hick’s Law
Minimize choices
Minimize choices when response times are critical to decrease

decision time.
Smaller steps
Break complex tasks into smaller steps in order to decrease

cognitive load.
Provide recommendations
Avoid overwhelming users by highlighting recommended options.
Progressive onboarding
Use progressive onboarding to minimize cognitive load for new users.
Simplification
Be careful not to simplify to the point of abstraction.
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, the 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.
UX THEORY
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.
RELATED | MENTAL MODEL OCCAM’S RAZOR

Jakob’s Law
Expectations
Users will transfer expectations they have built around one

familiar product to another that appears similar.
Existing mental models
By leveraging existing mental models, we can create superior

user experiences in which the users can focus on their tasks,
rather than on learning new models.
Minimize discord
When making changes, minimize discord by empowering

users to continue using a familiar version for a limited time.
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 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.
UX THEORY
Law of Common
Region
Elements tend to be perceived into groups if they are
sharing an area with a clearly defined boundary.
RELATED | LAW OF UNIFORM CONNECTEDNESS SELECTIVE ATTENTION

Law of Common Region
Structure and relationship
Common region creates a clear structure and helps users

quickly and effectively understand the relationship between
elements and sections.
Borders
Adding a border around an element or group of elements is an

easy way to create common region.
Backgrounds
Common region can also be created by defining a background

behind an element or group of elements.
Origin
Gestalt psychologists Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka and

Wolfgang Kohler developed a set of principles in the early 20th
century aimed at describing how people naturally perceive
objects as organized patterns and objects. These principles,
commonly referred to as Gestalt laws principles, are organized
into five categories: proximity, similarity, continuity, closure,
and connectedness.
UX THEORY
Law of Proximity
Objects that are near to, or proximate to each
other, tend to be grouped together.
RELATED | LAW OF SIMILARITY SELECTIVE ATTENTION

Law of Proximity
Relationship
Proximity helps to establish a relationship with nearby objects.
Perception
Elements in close proximity are perceived to share similar

functionality or traits.
Organizing information
Proximity helps users understand and organize information

faster and more efficiently.
Origin

and connectedness.
UX THEORY
Law of Prägnanz
People will perceive and interpret ambiguous or complex
images as the simplest form possible, because it is the
interpretation that requires the least cognitive effort.
RELATED | TESLER’S LAW SELECTIVE ATTENTION

Law of Prägnanz
Simplicity and order
The human eye likes to find simplicity and order in complex

shapes because it prevents us from becoming overwhelmed
with information.
Visual processing
Research confirms that people are better able to visually

process and remember simple figures than complex figures.
Unified shape
The human eye simplifies complex shapes by transforming

them into a single, unified shape.
Origin

and connectedness.
UX THEORY
Law of Similarity
The human eye tends to perceive similar elements in
a design as a complete picture, shape or group, even
if those elements are separated.
RELATED | LAW OF PROXIMITY SELECTIVE ATTENTION

Law of Similarity
Visual similarity
Elements that are visually similar will be perceived as related.
Common meaning
Color, shape, size, orientation and movement can signal

that elements belong to the same group and likely share a
common meaning or functionality.
Links and navigation
Ensure that links and navigation systems are visually

differentiated from normal text elements.
Origin

and connectedness.
UX THEORY
Law of Uniform
Connectedness
Elements that are visually connected are perceived as
more related than elements with no connection.
RELATED | LAW OF COMMON REGION SELECTIVE ATTENTION

Law of Uniform Connectedness
Grouping
Group functions of a similar nature so they are visually

connected via colors, lines, frames, or other shapes.
Connection
Alternately, use a tangible connecting reference (line, arrow,

etc.) from one element to the next to create a visual connection.
Context and relationship
Use uniform connectedness to show context or to emphasize

the relationship between similar items.
Origin

and connectedness.
UX THEORY
Miller’s Law
The average person can only keep seven (plus or
minus two) items in their working memory.
RELATED | HICK’S LAW CHUNKING

Miller’s Law
Magical number seven
Don’t use the ‘magical number seven’ to justify unnecessary

design limitations.
Chunks
Organize content into smaller chunks to help users process,

understand, and memorize easily.
Short-term memory
Short-term memory capacity will vary per individual, based on

their prior knowledge and situational context.
Origin
In 1956, George Miller asserted that the span of immediate

memory and absolute judgement were both limited to around
seven pieces of information. The main unit of information
is the bit, the amount of data necessary to make a choice
between two equally likely alternatives. Likewise, 4 bits of
information is a decision between 16 binary alternatives (four
successive binary decisions). The point where confusion
creates an incorrect judgement is the channel capacity. In
other words, the quantity of bits that can be transmitted
reliably through a channel, within a certain amount of time.
UX THEORY
Occam’s Razor
Among competing hypotheses that predict equally
well, the one with the fewest assumptions should
be selected.
RELATED | TESLER’S LAW ANALYSIS PARALYSIS

Occam’s Razor
Reducing complexity
The best method for reducing complexity is to avoid it in the

first place.
Analyze
Analyze each element and remove as many as possible,

without compromising the overall function.
Completion
Consider completion only when no additional items can be removed.
Origin
Occam’s razor (also Ockham’s razor; Latin: lex parsimoniae

‘law of parsimony’) is a problem-solving principle that, when
presented with competing hypothetical answers to a problem,
one should select the one that makes the fewest assumptions.
The idea is attributed to William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347),
who was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher,
and theologian.
UX THEORY
Pareto Principle
For many events, roughly 80% of the effects come
from 20% of the causes.
RELATED | PARKINSON’S LAW ANALYSIS PARALYSIS

Pareto Principle
Distribution
Inputs and outputs are often not evenly distributed.
Contributors
A large group may contain only a few meaningful contributors

to the desired outcome.
Effort
Focus the majority of effort on the areas that will bring the
largest benefits to the most users.
Origin
Its origins stem back to Vilfredo Pareto, an economist

who noticed 80% of Italy’s land was owned by 20% of the
population. Though it might seem vague, the 80/20 way of
thinking can provide insightful and endlessly applicable analysis
of lopsided systems, including user experience strategy.
UX THEORY
Parkinson’s Law
Any task will inflate until all of the available time is spent.
RELATED | PARETO PRINCIPLE FLOW

Parkinson’s Law
Time limit
Limit the time it takes to complete a task to what users expect

it’ll take.
Duration
Reducing the actual duration to complete a task from the

expected duration will improve the overall user experience.
Autofill
Features such as autofill to save the user time when providing

critical information within forms. This allows for quick
completion of purchases, bookings and other such functions
while preventing task inflation.
Origin
Articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson as part of the first

sentence of a humorous essay published in The Economist in
1955 and since republished online, it was reprinted with other
essays in the book Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress
(London, John Murray, 1958). He derived the dictum from his
extensive experience in the British Civil Service.
UX THEORY
Postel’s Law
Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in
what you send.
RELATED | TESLER’S LAW FLOW

Postel’s Law
User input and action
Be empathetic to, flexible about, and tolerant of any of the various

actions the user could take or any input they might provide.
Anticipate anything
Anticipate virtually anything in terms of input, access, and

capability while providing a reliable and accessible interface.
Resiliency
The more we can anticipate and plan for in design, the more
resilient the design will be.
Variable input
Accept variable input from users, and translate that input to

meet your requirements.
Origin
Postel’s Law (also known as the Robustness Principle) was

formulated by Jon Postel, an early pioneer of the internet. The Law
is a design guideline for software, specifically in regards to TCP
and networks, and states “TCP implementations should follow
a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you
do, be liberal in what you accept from others”. In other words,
programs that send messages to other machines (or to other
programs on the same machine) should conform completely to the
specifications, but programs that receive messages should accept
non-conformant input as long as the meaning is clear.
UX THEORY
Peak-End Rule
People judge an experience largely 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.
RELATED | JAKOB’S LAW COGNITIVE BIAS

Peak-End Rule
User journey
Pay close attention to the most intense points and the final
moments (the ‘end’) of the user journey.
Moments
Identify the moments when your product is most helpful,

valuable, or entertaining and design to delight the end user.
Origin
A 1993 study titled “When More Pain Is Preferred to Less:

Adding a Better End” by Kahneman, Fredrickson, Charles
Schreiber, and Donald Redelmeier provided groundbreaking
evidence for the peak-end rule. Participants were subjected to
two different versions of a single unpleasant experience. The
first trial had subjects submerge a hand in 14°C water for 60
seconds. The second trial had subjects submerge the other
hand in 14°C water for 60 seconds, but then keep their hand
submerged for an additional 30 seconds, during which the
temperature was raised to 15 °C. Subjects were then offered
the option of which trial to repeat. Against the law of temporal
monotonicity, subjects were more willing to repeat the
second trial, despite a prolonged exposure to uncomfortable
temperatures. Kahneman et al. concluded that “subjects chose
the long trial simply because they liked the memory of it better
than the alternative (or disliked it less)”.
UX THEORY
Serial Position Effect

Users have a tendency to best remember the first and
last items in a series.
RELATED | ZEIGARNIK EFFECT SELECTIVE ATTENTION

Serial Position Effect
Placement
Placing the least important items in the middle of lists can be

helpful because these items tend to be stored less frequently
in long-term and working memory.
Increase memorization
Positioning key actions on the far left and right within

elements such as navigation can increase memorization.
Origin
The serial position effect, a term coined by Herman Ebbinghaus,

describes how the position of an item in a sequence affects
recall accuracy. The two concepts involved – the primacy effect
and the recency effect – explain how items presented at the
beginning and end of a sequence are recalled with greater
accuracy than items in the middle. Manipulation of the serial
position effect to create better user experiences is reflected
in many popular designs by successful companies like Apple,
Electronic Arts and Nike.
UX THEORY
Tesler’s Law
In any system, there is a certain amount of
complexity that cannot be reduced.
RELATED | POSTEL’S LAW COGNITIVE LOAD

Tesler’s Law
Core of complexity
All processes have a core of complexity that cannot be

designed away and therefore must be assumed by either the
system or the user.
Complexity burden
Ensure as much of the burden as possible is lifted from users by

dealing with inherent complexity during design and development.
Simplification
Take care not to simplify interfaces to the point of abstraction.
Origin
While working for Xerox PARC in the mid-1980s, Larry Tesler

realized that the way users interact with an application is 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.
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.
UX THEORY
Von Restorff Effect

When multiple similar objects are present, the one that
differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered.
RELATED | LAW OF SIMILARITY SELECTIVE ATTENTION

Von Restorff Effect
Visual distinction
Make important information or key actions visually distinctive.
Restraint
Use restraint when placing emphasis on visual elements to

avoid them competing with one another and to ensure salient
items don’t get mistakenly identified as ads.
Color contrast
Don’t exclude those with a color vision deficiency or low vision

by relying exclusively on color to communicate contrast.
Motion
Carefully consider users with motion sensitivity when using

motion to communicate contrast.
Origin
The theory was coined by German psychiatrist and

pediatrician Hedwig von Restorff (1906–1962), who, in her
1933 study, found that when participants were presented
with a list of categorically similar items with one distinctive,
isolated item on the list, memory for that item was improved.
UX THEORY
Zeigarnik Effect
People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks
better than completed tasks.
RELATED | GOAL-GRADIENT EFFECT FLOW

Zeigarnik Effect
Content discovery
Invite content discovery by providing clear signifiers of

additional content.
Artificial progress
Providing artificial progress towards a goal will help to

ensure users are more likely to have the motivation to
complete that task.
Progress
Provide a clear indication of progress in order to motivate

users to complete tasks.
Origin
Bluma Wulfovna Zeigarnik (1900–1988) was a Soviet

psychologist and psychiatrist. In the 1920s, she conducted
a study on memory, in which she compared memory in
relation to incomplete and complete tasks. She had found
that incomplete tasks are easier to remember than successful
ones. This is now known as the Zeigarnik effect. She later
began working at the Institute of Higher Nervous Activity,
which is where she would meet her next big influence,
Vygowski, and become a part of his circle of scientists. It
was also there that Zeigarnik founded the Department of
Psychology. During that time, Zeigarnik received the Lewin
Memorial Award in 1983 for her psychological research.
UX THEORY
Campbell’s Law
The more important a metric is in social decision
making, the more likely it is to be manipulated.
RELATED | PARETO PRINCIPLE COGNITIVE BIAS

Campbell’s Law
Optimization
People tend to optimize their behavior to improve a metric

when it’s used to determine success or failure, sometimes
leading to ridiculous or dangerous results that impact the
overall user experience. It’s critical that we use data as a
tool to assist in decision making instead of allowing metrics
alone to determine a decision.
Limitation
Metrics cannot fully and accurately describe the world. Every metric
collected reflects a decision about what is considered important.
Combination
The combination of quantitative metrics with qualitative data

enables us to better understand the consequences of design
decisions. Without this combination, consequences may be
missed by relying on passively collected analytics data.
Origin
Campbell’s law is an adage developed by Donald T. Campbell,

a psychologist and social scientist who often wrote about
research methodology. It states: the more any quantitative
social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more
subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt
it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is
intended to monitor.
UX THEORY
Stroop Effect
The mental dissonance caused when we attempt to
make sense of two conflicting attributes at once.
RELATED | SIMON EFFECT HICK’S LAW

Stroop Effect
Reaction time
Reaction time is delayed when our minds attempt to process

information that contradicts our understanding (e.g. a green
sky, purple grass, a red lemon, a blue apple).
Consider context
Ensure the design of elements makes sense in the context and

its intended functionality. For example, you wouldn’t want to
style a submit button the same as the cancel button right next
to it.
Consider Congruency
Ensure the design of elements is congruent with the content

or message they are intended to communicate (e.g. a back
button doesn’t include a right arrow).
Origin
The effect was named after John Ridley Stroop, who published
the effect in English in 1935 in an article in the Journal of
Experimental Psychology entitled “Studies of interference
in serial verbal reactions” which includes three different
experiments. However, the effect was first published in 1929
in Germany by Erich Rudolf Jaensch, and its roots can be
followed back to works of James McKeen Cattell and Wilhelm
Maximilian Wundt in the nineteenth century
UX THEORY
Simon Effect
Reaction times are usually faster, and reactions are
usually more accurate, when the signal occurs in the
same relative location as the response.
RELATED | STROOP EFFECT FITTS’ LAW

Simon Effect
Direct manipulation
People can more quickly find interaction elements that appear in

the relative location at which they expect a change to occur (e.g.
the action to add an item to a list is at the bottom of the list).
Consider congruency
Ensure the design of elements is congruent with the content

or message they are intended to communicate (e.g. a back
button doesn’t appear on the right side of an interface).
Origin
The effect originates from a study conducted by Simon &

Rudell (1967) in which participants responded to the words
‘left’ and ‘right’ that were randomly presented to the left or
right ear. Although the location of the sound was completely
irrelevant to the task, they showed a marked delay in reaction
time if the location of the stimulus was not the same as the
required response (e.g. they were to react left to a word that
was presented in the right ear).
UX THEORY
Accot-Zhai
Steering Law
The time necessary to guide a pointer or drag a finger
along a path that has borders.
RELATED | FITTS’ LAW COGNITIVE LOAD

Accot-Zhai Steering Law
Human physiology
Moving a cursor along a long, straight line is physically difficult

for humans due to the physiology of our elbows and wrists. As
a result, the longer the motion, the greater the chance of error.
Steer-friendly design
Ensure the path in which the cursor must travel along dropdown
menus, hierarchical menus, sliders and other path-following UI
elements is as wide and as short as possible. Avoid hierarchical
menus more than two-levels deep, and use a short time delay
between mouse hover and reveal of the child menu.
Diagonal movement
Additionally, allow for diagonal movement between parent

menu items and the corresponding child menu to ensure they
are not inadvertently closed if the cursor strays from a straight
path.
Origin
The steering law has been independently discovered and

studied three times (Rashevsky, 1959; Drury, 1971; Accot
and Zhai, 1997). Within human–computer interaction, the
law was rediscovered by Johnny Accot and Shumin Zhai,
who mathematically derived it from Fitts’ law using integral
calculus, experimentally verified it for a class of tasks, and
developed the most general mathematical statement of it.
UX THEORY
Law of Closure
The tendency to complete an incomplete shape in
order to rationalize the whole.
RELATED | SELECTIVE ATTENTION

Law of Closure
Iconography
Icons are a common place to see the principle of closure because

it helps simplify visual complexity. We must be sure to test our
designs to ensure that users understand what the icon means and
consider augmenting icons with clear labels when needed.
Additional content
Designers can use closure to simplify visual elements, and

to communicate and encourage interaction with additional
information. For example, carousel designs use closure when
they show only parts of an item in the carousel.
Misleading
Be mindful not to mislead people into believing the content

is complete (the illusion of completeness) when simplifying
visual information in order to encourage interaction and
provide enough context to communicate there’s more content
to be seen. Too little information makes it difficult for users to
fill in the blanks.
Origin
Gestalt psychologists developed a set of principles in the

early 20th century aimed at describing how people naturally
perceive objects as organized patterns and objects. These
principles, commonly referred to as Gestalt laws or principles,
are organized into five categories: proximity, similarity,
continuity, closure, and connectedness.
UX THEORY
Law of Continuity
Elements arranged on a line or curve are perceived to be
more related than elements not on the line or curve.
RELATED | SELECTIVE ATTENTION

Law of Continuity
Designing for continuity
Designers can use continuity to guide users between objects

and groups within an interface (e.g. aligning interface
elements in such a way that creates a visual relationship
between them).
Disrupting continuity
Designers can disrupt continuity with design elements such

as dividers between objects or groups to communicate that a
new section has started.
Origin
Gestalt psychologists developed a set of principles in the

early 20th century aimed at describing how people naturally
perceive objects as organized patterns and objects. These
principles, commonly referred to as Gestalt laws or principles,
are organized into five categories: proximity, similarity,
continuity, closure, and connectedness.
UX THEORY
Paradox of the
Active User
Users never read manuals but start using the
software immediately.
RELATED | JAKOB’S LAW FLOW

Paradox of the Active User
Motivation
Users are often motivated complete their immediate tasks

and therefore they don't want to spend time up front
reading documentation.
The paradox
This paradox exist because users will save time in the long run
if they take the time to optimize the system and learn more
about it.
Guidance
Make guidance accessible throughout the product experience

and design it to fit within the context of use so that it can help
these active new users no matter what path they choose to
take (e.g. tooltips with helpful information).
Origin
This concept was first defined by Mary Beth Rosson and John
Carroll in 1987 as part of their larger work on interaction
design, Interfacing thought: cognitive aspects of human-
computer interaction. Rosson and Carroll found that new users
were not reading the manuals supplied with computers and
instead would just get started using them, even if it created
errors and roadblocks.
UX THEORY
The Principle of
Least Effort
People will take the path or action requiring the
least amount of mental and physical energy to
complete a task.
RELATED | PARETO PRINCIPLE COGNITIVE LOAD

The Principle of Least Effort
Show, don’t tell
Whenever you must explain something to the user, show

them with examples instead of telling them about it in the text
(e.g. onboarding processes that demonstrate by highlighting
relevant interface elements).
Progressive disclosure
Elements such as content accordions can simplify an interface by

showing users a little bit of information and letting them choose
if they want more detail. The less content they must process, the
faster they can find what they need and accomplish their goals.
Limit to what’s needed
People want information and content provided to them as

quickly and simply as possible, and see content required from
them as slowing them down. Only ask users for information
that is absolutely necessary (e.g. sign-up or log-in forms).
Origin
The principle of least effort was proposed in 1949 by Harvard

linguist George Kingsley Zipf in Human Behavior and the
Principle of Least Effort. Zipf’s immediate area of interest was the
statistical study of the frequency of word use, but his principle
has also been applied in linguistics to such topics as lexical
diffusion, language acquisition, and conversation analysis.
About the author, Jon Yablonski
Jon Yablonski is a multi-disciplinary designer,

speaker, writer, and digital creator based in
Detroit metro. His passion is for designing
digital tools that empower people and
augment their abilities in order to achieve
their goals. He’s had the opportunity to learn
and grow from a variety of challenges throughout his career
— from e-commerce platforms, mobile apps and internal
products to HMI systems within state-of-the-art vehicle
platforms.
Laws of UX (lawsofux.com) is a website that seeks to make

complex psychology heuristics accessible to more designers
through an interactive resource that collects those that are
relevant to user experience design and presents them in a
visually engaging way.
Get the Laws of UX book!
Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design

Better Products & Services
Released April 2020. Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc. ISBN: 9781492055310
This practical guide explains how you can apply key principles
in psychology to build products and experiences that are
more intuitive and human-centered. It provides a close look
at familiar apps and experiences to provide clear examples
of how UX designers can build experiences that adapt to how
users perceive and process digital interfaces.
Learn more at: lawsofux.com/book

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Laws of UX © 2022 Jon Yablonski. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form

The information in this document is accurate to the best of our knowledge

The author and publisher make no warranties of any kind, express or

For more information, please write to:

This PDF version of Laws of UX was Published in the UK.

WRITTEN AND DESIGNED BY JON YABLONSKI

PUBLISHED BY PIP DECKS®

As humans, we have an underlying ‘blueprint’ for how we

HOW TO USE LAWS OF UX

Connect the cards

Start with the UX Theory cards as a starting point for

Pair your design principles with UX Theories

This strengthens the connection between what the principle is

Create a shared collective knowledge and vocabulary

Better articulate your design decisions to peers and

LAWSOFUX.COM © JON YABLONSKI, 2022

RELATED | CONCEPTUAL MODEL USABILITY TEST

LAWSOFUX.COM © JON YABLONSKI, 2022

Discoverability is key to learning what’s possible

It defines the ease at which users can find new content

Ensure clear focal points

Discoverability is supported through clear focal points,

Distinction: discoverability vs findability

Findability refers to the ability to find content or a functionality

This fundamental principle of interaction was defined by

RELATED | SIGNIFIERS USABILITY TEST

LAWSOFUX.COM © JON YABLONSKI, 2022

Affordances help you know what action to take

Help users achieve their goal by connecting what an object

The form of the interactive element implies the function

Affordances help people figure out what actions are possible

Distinction: signifier vs affordance

Affordances are the actions that are possible, while signifiers

This fundamental principle of interaction was defined by

RELATED | AFFORDANCES USABILITY TEST

LAWSOFUX.COM © JON YABLONSKI, 2022

Signifiers provide important cues

They show how and where people can interact with an

Apply signifiers to communicate the ‘what’

Use signals such as labels, arrows, icons and sounds to lead

Distinction: signifier vs affordance

Affordances are the actions that are possible, while signifiers

This fundamental principle of interaction was defined by

RELATED | MAPPING USABILITY TEST

LAWSOFUX.COM © JON YABLONSKI, 2022

Feedback communicates the current state of a system or object

Feedback allows the user to feel in control and take

Good design gives clear feedback

Clear feedback prevents discomfort or difficulty. For example,

Avoid ambiguity. Be clear and specific.

The key is to design the experience to never leave the

This fundamental principle of interaction was defined by

RELATED | CONCEPTUAL MODEL USABILITY TEST

LAWSOFUX.COM © JON YABLONSKI, 2022

Mapping helps you understand what controls will do

When controls are mapped to the layout of the devices being

For example, rotating a steering wheel clockwise or counter-

Spatial analogies, such as moving an interactive element up

Mapping is a technical term that was borrowed by researcher,