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.
Takeaways
- Users will transfer expectations they have built around one familiar product to another that appears similar.
- 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.
- When making changes, minimize discord by empowering users to continue using a familiar version for a limited time.
Origins
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.
My View On This
Personally feel this is one of them laws people should follow in UX but not exactly to the book. Basically Jakob recommends the use of familiar patterns in design in order to facilitate user experience, because users prefer it when a site works in the same way as all the other sites they already know. You would initially think this law wants websites that perform different tasks and have different end goals to look the same as other websites, but in doing so the creative freedoms people have when making the website can go to waste. That’s why this law only actually implies that placement of navigation, icons, etc should be the similar.
Jakob’s Law: Will Users’ Love for Well-known Patterns Kill UX Innovation?
A really good article I seen relating to the point above.
”Recognizing patterns and similarities allows people to predict what’s coming next. Recognition occurs by recalling semantic memory which is implemented by constant repetition of the stimulus.”
Today, our brain is well-conditioned by this principle, which is proven by several psychological phenomena. One of them is called Apophenia, the human tendency to see patterns that do not actually exist. This article goes in a good amount of detail regarding patterns, how the user see patterns and how we as designers can ditch the standards set if it serves the user. I highly am in favour of the idea of keeping to the standard yes, but also straying of from the standard. It is okay to leave standard patterns behind for the sake of a great User Experience.