This week was an introduction to the IXD303 module where we got our brief for this semester’s project. The project is designing a digital product related to healthcare. This is a very broad subject area with lots of directions I could go in. I am excited to get started with it. However, this week, I decided to research more into the laws of UX to further develop my understanding of good design.

Jacobs Law

This law was created by Jacob Nielson, a UX expert from the Nielson/Norman Group. The overall takeaway from this law is:

“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.”

My thoughts:

Reading this, it makes a lot of sense. I think this is especially important for sites that have a similar concept. For example, shopping, social media, or banking apps. Things that should remain similar could include, placement of navigation, icons, checkout process, etc. There is no need to waste time trying to change things that are already proven to work well elsewhere.

This way, users don’t have to waste time learning how to use your interface and instead, can focus on the tasks they need to get done. This will create a more enjoyable user experience and will attract more users.

In my experience, if something is too difficult to use and very different from anything I have used before, I will complete my task elsewhere. This is what most users will do which proves to me how important it is to make the users’ experience easy and with little thought needed.

 

Parkinson’s Law

This law was created by Cyril Northcote Parkinson. It states:

“Any task will inflate until all of the available time is spent”

My thoughts:

I think that if a task takes less time than expected, the user will leave feeling more satisfied and less stressed. This will also encourage them to use the product again because they know it’s not complicated and won’t take up much of their time.

One way we can make things more efficient is by having autofill. Users that are returning to an interface don’t have to fill in all their details again in an e-commerce app, for example. Another way to do this is to cut out all unnecessary information. This way users don’t have to spend time reading and can get things done much quicker. This can even be using icons on buttons instead of words.

 

Law of Similarity

This is a principle in psychology first proposed by Gestalt psychologists. It states that:

“The human eye tends to perceive similar elements in a design as a complete picture, shape, or group, even if those elements are separated.”

My Thoughts:

You can see this a lot in UX design and it’s very useful. I think one of the biggest uses is showing the user how something functions. For example, with the login screen shown below. Users will assume the first three boxes have the same functions because they are similar. These expectations make it easier and quicker for users to complete tasks. I think this is also why it’s important all buttons are consistent in size and colour, so users know what their function is.

 

Reflect

Researching these laws of UX has been a good refresher for me. I have also learned about some new ones I hadn’t heard of before. It shows me how important the small details are in design and that there are many simple ways to improve the overall user experience.