19 ms·

Laws of UX

535 points by saketmehta 9y ago

throwaway081203 9y ago
The navigation on this site is so bad I created an account on HN just to mention it.
- megous 9y ago
  I wish more websites would go back to header/sidebar/content layouts and rather than trying to impress with all the gimmicky crap and random layout, would again start trying to inform.
dozzie 9y ago
You do realize that this "UX" thing was for decades called "ergonomics" and had a large body of research behind, do you?
- radiorental 9y ago
  Did you mean to say 'Usability' Ergonomics was and still is it's own thing. It very much relates to the physical world exclusively.
  - dozzie 9y ago
    So a digital interface that is displayed on a screen of a desktop is "UX", but the very same digital interface that is displayed on a touchscreen attached to industrial machine is suddenly a totally different field "ergonomics"? Or does it need physical buttons to be called that?
    - daleco 9y ago
      In your case, there would be an overlap. A digital interface is UI. UX is multi disciplinary, it would focus more on the human centered process of building an application that fits the user needs. Ergonomic specialists would take into account the job (task), physical environment, user need, equipement (does the worker wear gloves...). Some are trained to be able to work on both fields (Human factor, cognitive engineer...) UX could also be called cognitive ergonomics.
  - boomlinde 9y ago
    You interact with websites using physical means, so it's an important aspect of how users experience them. If a website has tiny buttons and icons, it might be hard to use with a phone. On a large screen computer with a precision pointing tool it might be preferable that they are small. If the information density is ten words per 2000 vertical pixels, it's going to be a pain in the ass with a scroll wheel, not so much on a tablet where scrolling has almost friction-less inertia. Low contrast might be bad if you are using a phone, great if you're in a dark room. If it's your job to improve the user experience, you're doing a bad job if ergonomics is not a consideration.
    - radiorental 9y ago
      My point (as a UXer) is that up to around 7 years ago we were generally known as practitioners in the field.of usability / user interface design / etc. The people in the field of Human factors and ergonomics pretty much still have those titles. There is a lot of overlap but my point is UXers were known as Usability folks on the whole
- carlmr 9y ago
  Problem being that web design is the most likely computer discipline to not actually have that many academics in it.
- asdjasldkjkljd 9y ago
  What's the point of your comment? You're deriding the author, who may or may not even read this, you're deriding UX as terminology and as a profession, you're oversimplifying the term ergonomics (it's specifically tied to working environments)... You're literally adding nothing but a smug attitude. Does this make you feel good? You could use your knowledge to be, at minimum, mildly informative or helpful to someone who might know less than you... but instead you're trying to project a false sense of superiority to complete strangers.
- AltCtrl 9y ago
  People misunderstand UX; ergonomics, usability, UI are parts of a full UX process
tomgp 9y ago
Is there a law of UX related to making a user scroll thousands of pixels to read 10 sentences?
- tomgp 9y ago
  Sorry, was facetious. The site looks lovely but if it's purpose was really to inform rather than to advertise the creators graphic design skills different decisions might have been made with respect to how the content is presented.
- cyunem 9y ago
  And maybe a law that says things have to load in slowly so it's possible to scroll past them before they appear?
  - gkya 9y ago
    It's all about the experience, the exploration, the perdition of purpose as a tool of the establishment that conditions the individual to always be learning, for only then it can fruit him in his greedy machine of post-modern industry. Also, frankly, this is nearly a dadaist instance of a web page.
- soneca 9y ago
  I agree. And the laws are stated in complex sentences, so I really could use some more explanation. To learn more I have to click, go to another page, wait for a slow animation of the poster design and only then I could one paragraph explaining it further. And when I go back to the home page, it takes up to the top at the first law and I have to scroll it all over again to the point I was before. Awful experience. It looks like the author is a talented graphic designer that decided to compile the laws of UX without reading them (actually, I wouldn't know, as there was too much friction for me to read them all)
  - yoz-y 9y ago
    At first I did not like that the 3rd law spoke about 'sites' when it could be applied to applications as well (or any other usable thing). Then I realized that these are most probably citations.
aserafini 9y ago
Ironically the site itself breaks the 3rd listed law, Jakob's law that states "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." because it breaks the back button. When navigating to a law and then hitting back the site sends you to the top of the list again. -
- Lxr 9y ago
  My vote for law 11 is “don’t use JavaScript unless it’s absolutely necessary”. That way the browser actually behaves the way you expect.
  - rovek 9y ago
    Seems a broad law considering * Expectation is subjective and this forum are the minority * History-jacking done badly is not a reason to throw out a technology Random JavaScript hate is so last year
    - iapx88 9y ago
      > Random JavaScript hate is so last year It may well be, and with good reason. However, I still encounter people who think that JavaScript is only used for things like onMouseOver and find it difficult to accept that actually, their favourite app or site is entirely powered by JavaScript.
      - throwanem 9y ago
        Part of that may result from the fact that, when it's done properly, the fact that it contravenes no expectations makes it easy to overlook. Like the first rule of systems administration - when you do your job right, nobody notices; it's only when you screw something up that anyone remembers you exist.
      - paulryanrogers 9y ago
        Using Noscript or an equivalent can be very enlightening. IME many major sites do work without JS. My guess is for accessibility.
gkya 9y ago
Gkya's law of usefulness of a web page: The usefulness of a web page is a function of the multiplication of the number of laws it cites w/o any context whatsoever and the ratio of the lines of text such page contains in a screenful over how many it could've contained. > The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target. Wat? > The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. Certainly. But this is as relevant as general relativity to designing UX: the context is the key. What are you making, for what purpose, when, for whom? In this form in which it's put forth here, this can mean about anything. > 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. This is SOOO WRONG. I probably don't spend time on those sites because I'm in love with their UI, most of the time I'm fighting it with uBlock and patience. Many people are in prisons, that doesn't mean they like it. > 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 of us. Again, this means nothing. It's like, "stones are hard". Alright then, what am I supposed to do? Sand them? Hit my head on them? Throw them at passers-by? > Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend to be grouped together. Alright... > The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory. Yeah... > Any task will inflate until all of the available time is spent. Oh, thanks... > Users have a propensity to best remember the first and last items in a series. This is kind of immediately useful, but it's also neat that this rule is ignored in making this fancy bulleted list. > Tesler's Law, also known as The Law of Conservation of Complexity, states that for any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced. Agree. > The Von Restorff effect, also known as The Isolation Effect, predicts that when multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered. Certainly true. This web page is a good demonstration of bad UX: there certainly are some stuff there that could be useful, but no indication of how that can be possible is made, no explanation of what is before the eyes of the reader is there, the only means of interpretation provided to the reader is intuition, illegiblity is swiftly achieved by using black font on a nearly-black background, the viewport is used with absolutely no care to efficiency, and there is a menu that requires JavaScript to operate. This is like a parody of a page on UX laws. Put information on your web pages, people.
limaoscarjuliet 9y ago
The animation and no text displayed when a law is selected makes me think I'm waiting for loading to complete. It takes me couple of seconds to realize I need to scroll down to see the text.
sarenrae 9y ago
Welcome to this website about UX that took all of 2 seconds to annoy the shit out of me by giving me the impression that I am in some sort of foreground mode that I possibly might want to get out of to access the site...
janci 9y ago
Oh the irony, this site has terrible UX.
- fredley 9y ago
  <ul> {% for law in laws %} <li><strong>{{ law.name }}</strong> - {{ law.summary }} <a href="{{ law.wikipedia_url }}">{{ law.name }} on Wikipedia</a> </li> {% endfor %} </ul>
  - audiolion 9y ago
    Jinja2 or Django template language?
    - oneweekwonder 9y ago
      > Jinja2 If I would guess;
    - aserafini 9y ago
      I think it's valid in both!
js8 9y ago
The desktop apps of the 90s was the heyday of UX. There are many positive things that could be said, but in the interest of brevity, I'll mention just two. Customizability. Users could set up their own hot keys, and even their own tool bars. Discoverability. Every UI widget (knob) had a tooltip, which explained its function. When a menu item was being browsed, there was a help line on the bottom that explained its function. Items that could be clicked were either visually distinct (such as buttons), or highlighted when hovering over them.
- oblio 9y ago
  > The desktop apps of the 90s was the heyday of UX for power users. Regular users didn't set up their own hotkeys or their toolbars. And they definitely didn't read the help or tool tips. The best UX for regular users, not interested in computers, is somewhere between websites and mobile apps.
  - badsectoracula 9y ago
    Every time i hear about "Regular users" being the reason why modern UIs suck so much i get the feeling that regular users tend to be the enemy of actual users.
  - reitanqild 9y ago
    That's because they don't get a chance anymore. Many of us have graduated from users to superusers to sysadmins or devs but modern software feel quite dumbed down compared to the options we had.
    - oblio 9y ago
      That's only because you were interested in IT, either as a career or as a hobby. Most people aren't.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Regular users are not interested in computers. They're interested in getting shit done, and getting on with their lives. Which is precisely what modern UX makes harder. You see, regular users aren't "neanderthal users". They have a brain and some amount of focus, and if they have to use an application/website more than few times, they'll figure out and appreciate any feature that lets them do their work more efficiently. Unfortunately, modern UX trends are all about removing productivity, turning tools into toys.
zv 9y ago
law so fux
dhimes 9y ago
I don't have the references right in front of me but I'm pretty sure the 7 +/- 2 in Law six is now thought to be 5 +/- 2. Wiki puts it at 4 +/- 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-term_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-term_memory
- k_ 9y ago
  Plus the associated illustration (on Laws of UX) seems to agree with you.
- azhenley 9y ago
  Any of Nelson Cowan's recent papers on the topic are good references for this smaller working memory.
raister 9y ago
what a load... Conservation, momentum, trying to force people to use physics concepts for UX, for crying out loud, is anybody taking this seriously?
- daemonk 9y ago
  Yeah seriously. Are people really that insecure with their job titles that they need to invent bullshit to make UX seem more scientific?
zython 9y ago
Really surprised that Gestalt Laws are not listed. (Law of Proximity is one of them). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology
m12k 9y ago
> Jacob'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. This should come with the footnote "unless you're Facebook". I wonder if they're fully aware of the power they wield in defining what normal/expected UX looks like to a so many people? (e.g. popularizing the mobile three lines 'hamburger' menu, then later moving away from it themselves)
- arrrg 9y ago
  Most people aren’t working on such a site. I think such a footnote would be dangerous since too many people would then assume that they are, in fact, Facebook. I mean, even site of huge companies are not necessarily the Facebook of anything, since that’s just not the use case. I would, for example, argue that this law applies perfectly and without any qualifications to Apple’s website which might see a lot of traffic, but it’s not exactly a site users spend most of their times on. (I would also argue that the website people actually do spend most time on exists in a certain context where the outside world will have some influence on how and how efficiently it is perceived and used. Obviously the website people do spend the most time on has a role in forming that context, but so does the web as a whole and every single site.) Oh, and I do think Facebook is very aware of that fact, but you still have to see that they are always wrestling with the status quo, i.e. for them the law takes the form of “Users spend most of their time on other sites or on the old variant of your site. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know or your site as it was.“ It’s not exactly easy for them, even if they get to be expectation-defining and their power is not absolute. The stakes are high.
tabeth 9y ago
Is there are place where you can simply download pages already "perfected" in its UX and you can simply add your own custom business logic to it? Something in this direction would be Bootstrap's templates: https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.0/examples/ https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.0/examples/ I dunno about you, but I'd rather not have to think about how to make project sites look like every time, but at the same time not necessarily use the same purchased template (because said template may not actually have a good UX). The fact that there are no standards here is part of the problem, IMO. Novelty drives views and therefore revenue so some sites are incentivized to be overly complex, imo.
- rsoto 9y ago
  UX can't be a plug-and-play solution, because it depends on your business and the user's goals. UX is figuring out what should be a main menu element and what shouldn't. Home and princing? Definitively. ToS and privacy policy? Not so much. UX is making some elements stand out as they are. What's the best way to show links to users? Spoiler alert: blue color and underline. But then what happens when your brand color is blue and the design has a blue background? Then links won't stand out. You could say that the UX plug-and-play solution is the way browsers handle the default CSS, add a few more styles and you got sites like CraigsList and Pinboard. And brutalism web design was born. But that's the visual part about UX, you have to figure out what your users are feeling, and for most starting sites, feeling good is the selling point, so you have to understand their psyche and design towards it.
ComputerGuru 9y ago
For a website all about UX, the site is almost impossible to use (at least on mobile), both from an intuitiveness perspective and from a technical one. I am entirely unsure what I’m supposed to click on, if what I’m seeing is an animation or a loading progress bar, the back button gave me a blank, black page, and everything on the site would be better if it were simply static html without all this JavaScript garbage that serves exactly zero functional purpose.
- MaxBarraclough 9y ago
  I was undecided until middle-click opened in current tab. That's not what I asked for. Let my browser do its job. Edit: And right-click behaves like left-click! Non-standard and annoying. So much for "Jakob's Law".
  - culot 9y ago
    That is an unforgivable sin of web design: do not highjack the open-in-new-tab/new-window keystrokes.
    - nerflad 9y ago
      I've noticed some sites hijacking Alt-ArrowKeys now, too. Since backspace was deprecated, that means those websites prevent the user from using the keyboard to go Back. Very frustrating.
- rkagerer 9y ago
  Even on a desktop I find its UX annoying. It only feeds you a morsel of information at a time and you have to wait for stupid animation transitions in between. I read two panels then left. This information could easily have been presented in a normal HTML document.
  - mcgarnagle 9y ago
    perhaps the author was going for the clockwork orange esc feel of discomfort so you should actively think about the ux you're experiencing
nkkollaw 9y ago
Very cool, but no law about not using dark grey fonts on black..?
callesgg 9y ago
Don't fuck with scrolling that should be a rule.
thestephen 9y ago
Here's my suggested addition, law 00, that this website really needs to follow: Please don't make your websites into huge Vogue ads on desktop. I have a 27" monitor, I can fit more than 4 lines of text on my screen.
have_faith 9y ago
Did anyone else enjoy it for what it was? I get the criticisms, you want the web to be homogenised and free from any form of expression that doesn't present every piece of information in it's most human-machine digestible form, I get it. But it was pretty simple to use and the flair was minimal. I don't understand the pitchforks. There's a few minor annoyances like the back button not working as expected, but they are very minor for a site so small.
- cptskippy 9y ago
  > I get the criticisms, you want the web to be homogenised and free from any form of expression that doesn't present every piece of information in it's most human-machine digestible form, I get it. You don't get it, you just minimized and dismissed everyone's objections to this site. As a power point presentation, this site is great. As a line item on your resume, sure. As a resource that someone can use and reference, it's awful.
  - superhuzza 9y ago
    Right, and it's clearly not a reference website, considering it's a random selection of a few UX guidelines.
    - wldcordeiro 9y ago
      It looks like an individual's side project to learn a few tools and make something sort of fun and informational. Maybe it's not the immediate perfect solution of all things but so what.
      - superhuzza 9y ago
        Agreed, I thought it was kind of cool. I work in UX, so some aspects bother me - but it probably serves it's purpose well.
  - michaelcampbell 9y ago
    As a truck, a car is also awful.
kleff 9y ago
Tesler's law really rings true in non-UX environments too. I have worked with several people insisting that you can somehow remove complexity by wrapping it in more levels of abstraction, which is utterly infuriating. Sometimes you really just have to accept that certain things are complex, and deal with it.
yoz-y 9y ago
After all the criticism here I took a shot of paraphrasing the website in a page length post: https://yozy.net/2018/01/10-laws-of-ux-digested/ https://yozy.net/2018/01/10-laws-of-ux-digested/ A kind of an opinionated tl;dr
- vezycash 9y ago
  Your interpretation helped me understand most of the laws. I hope mods replaces yours with the original. Thanks.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  That's how it should have been done with decent UX. Simple and easy to read.
- MBCook 9y ago
  Excellent. Add some examples of good/bad use of each law and you’d have a fantastic resource.
- _lex 9y ago
  Honestly, just make it into a bullet point list: your reformulation of the ideas is WAY clearer and requires no additional explanations. Maybe add graphical examples if you must, but referring back to the text of the original site actually makes yours worse.
  - yoz-y 9y ago
    Thank you. I wanted to keep parts of the original mainly because I have merely interpreted the rules, however the work of compiling them, finding the links and so on was done by the original author(s).
- reaperducer 9y ago
  68K. Down from 331.
- dsego 9y ago
  You don't have the posters.
GordonS 9y ago
What font is this using? That weird mark on all the "st" pairs is irritating! Maybe we need a number 11, "don't use weird fonts"
bhauer 9y ago
Complaints about the web site itself aside, I'd like to encourage designers to exercise more restraint when applying some of these laws. Most poignant for me is the misapplication and zealous over-application of Hick's Law. If you review the detailed link provided by the site [1] you will see some commentary about when not to use Hick's law. Personally, I would significantly expand where Hick's law should not be applied. Examine the example provided that compares two remote controls: one with a common suite of buttons, and another with a dramatically reduced set of buttons. The site seems to suggest that at the very least the stripped remote yields ratings of "better user experience" from users. I would argue that such ratings alone should not drive UX decision-making. In my life, I have seen the trend of simplifying user interfaces chip away at functionality in virtually every interaction I have with technology, and I don't feel better for it. I really miss the opportunity to more finely control devices and applications according to my needs and wants. The most recent technological epoch—focused so much on mobile devices as it is—has been among the most pronounced with its stripping of functionality (ostensibly to make things easier to use on tiny displays). I often feel that this law is misapplied, perhaps subconsciously as an excuse to not build more comprehensive functionality. Why build a hard button that can turn on and off Closed Captioning when you can just put that in a menu, or better yet, not implement Closed Captioning at all? (To be clear: it can be perfectly fine to hide infrequently-used features in special menus. I use about:config in Firefox routinely. What bothers me most is that, for example, the browser on my phone doesn't have a tenth the options of Firefox and certainly doesn't have anything like about:config. The argument this is because it's a small screen device seems hollow to me; the real reason almost always rings of laziness and contempt for customization by users. Sometimes it will be spun as a means to reduce testing time—laziness by another name—as if mobile software has had any track record of being tested more thoroughly versus old desktop software.) Designers, hear my plea: Let's start pushing back on Hick's Law. Yes, in cases of needing a fast decision, a stripped user interface is agreeable. But in many cases, we're not acutely rushed while using our devices. Generally, I want more functionality from technology, not less. Stop using a UX law as cover for laziness and reduced feature sets. [1] https://uxplanet.org/design-principles-hicks-law-quick-decision-making-3dcc1b1a0632 https://uxplanet.org/design-principles-hicks-law-quick-decis...
- intrasight 9y ago
laythea 9y ago
Not a fan of the website UI. Eg. For me, having to have a big down arrow telling the user further content is down, is a UI fail.
JepZ 9y ago
The 3rd law is just wrong. Yes, we spend more time on other sites and therefore, we are used to the UX patterns used on other sites, but that doesn't mean that all other pages are doing good. Actually, we do not choose the sites we are on purely based on UX patterns. Instead we choose the sites by the service/functionality they are offering. So assuming that other pages are doing good UX and inventing new patterns will irritate users might be a good advise for junior UX designers, but UX experts should always question the status quo and search for improvements. So defining it as a law to stick to the UX patterns of the majority of sites is just wrong.
- JepZ 9y ago
  As the down voter did not care to leave a comment, I try to give an example: For years we were seeing the burger icon (3 horizontal bars) as an icon for menus. It took quite a while until it became a well known standard to add some 'Menu' text next to it (as you can see it on the Laws of UX page). So for years we had a pattern on most sites which was not optimal. Just using it because everybody else was using it, didn't solve the problem that a majority of users did not understand or knew the icon.
anonymousab 9y ago
One HCI book I read had a point that relates to Tesler's law: If your change requires users to make more clicks to perform the same task or action, it is probably a bad change.
anthonyshort 9y ago
The reaction on Hacker News compared to the reaction on Designer News is great. I think the problem people are struggling with is that it's a site created mostly for fun and delight, but the message is about "UX", which people generally think of as a way to maximize efficiency. Products don't always need to be relentlessly efficient to be considered useful or "good". Some products are created for you to just enjoy.
- neogodless 9y ago
  [0] https://www.designernews.co/stories/90954-laws-of-ux https://www.designernews.co/stories/90954-laws-of-ux Super positive. We love it. Blows my mind. But that's the point - it's really like two very, very different ways of thinking about, approaching/creating and evaluating projects (in this case, a web site.) On one side, they have "an eye for design" that really appreciates this novel UI design, but on this other side, we have that eye for efficiency and... ahem... user experience. (Rather than how a designer might experience something.)
  - zzzcpan 9y ago
    Oh, thanks for the link, this gives it a lot more context. A website made just to show his designer friends who are also pressured by the market to not value UX. Makes sense they romanticize UX and don't actually bother with it themselves.
    - anthonyshort 9y ago
      That's not really the point we were making and I'm not sure you have a correct understanding of UX, as you're conflating UX and visual design. There's no pressure in the market to not value UX. Everyone wants and needs that. If anything there are pressures to only value efficiency rather than delight. Sometimes "fun" isn't efficient.
- swearwolves 9y ago
  If it was created as a portfolio piece, I'd say it's successful. If it was created as useful and repeatable reference for the digital product/service/whatever industry, it falls short.
adambmedia 9y ago
I find the layout of poster downloads on the detail pages of the individual laws, with the text of the law and lawofux.com tag on the right side, unfortunate. The layout of the posters on the top-level page are 100x more evocative and elegant. They are the posters I want.
acbart 9y ago
Miller's Law - The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory. I actually needed to research this claim for my dissertation, and found that some researchers believe it is more complex than as presented by Miller. The number can fluctuate depending on what is being stored, the individual, and a number of other factors. A worthwhile starting point is the Wikipedia Page [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus...
swearwolves 9y ago
As a portfolio piece, it's great. I don't really care that it's not the most usable thing in the world - the underlying concept is sound, it's easy to see a lot of effort went into the design and execution, and the site looks great! Buuuut that's about all it's good for in it's current form. Unfortunately, the way something looks is but a tiny, tiny factor in the scope of the overall UX. This totally falls apart as a reference piece that I can bookmark and go back to from time to time. I think this is also compounded by the fact that the content of the site is centered around preaching good UX - but doesn't adhere to it's own advice. I can forgive lapses in UX thinking on software engineering blogs or the latest and greatest crypto forum...but if your site about UX has bad UX, you're in for a bad time - especially on HN.
jwdunne 9y ago
It would be better if, instead of a useless albeit pretty icon, there was a brief description of what the law is about. Fitts's Law tells me nothing about what it is other than its a UX "law" coined by someone called Fitts.
- zzzcpan 9y ago
  Here's a good article about this law, with many examples: http://asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html http://asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html
  - jwdunne 9y ago
    Wasn't really about the law itself. The same applies to all laws listed. I want to know which ones are most relevant to me. I'd like to see a summary for each one so I can make that decision before loading another page. Otherwise, I needlessly have to click on them, make a decision and click back if not. This is similar to how a blog typically shows an excerpt for each post on the blog index. See Jakob's law.
erAck 9y ago
I know it's Laws of UX, but I first read the domain name as Law of Sux.
AtTheLast 9y ago
The site looks nice, but I had to do way to much clicking to see the information. I gave up after the thrid law.
pkamb 9y ago
The "next" button is extremely difficult to find. I wonder if this site was user-tested. Nice, huge, Fitts' Law-optimized button though.
lucaspottersky 9y ago
i loved the fact that a site about UX doesn't allow me to open the links in new tabs... sooo annoying! damn it!
JonasJSchreiber 9y ago
I happen to think this is freaking awesome
foobaw 9y ago
Wish there were actual examples of each one instead of just an explanation. UI is cool but UX is poor.
Kenji 9y ago
Tesler's Law, also known as The Law of Conservation of Complexity, states that for any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced. Reminds me a lot of Kolmogorov complexity.
phantarch 9y ago
A new "Law of UX" should be coined: "Visual design is not UX."
uses 9y ago
"Make the most important thing stand out" I'd be careful with this one and be sure you understand what you are doing on a case-by-case basis. I have noticed a thing which I'm not sure there's a name for, but I call it Emphasis Blindness. Similar to Banner Blindness, I think users today are often trained by habit to ignore things that stand out as some kind of obvious promotional item. For example, you have 5 items in your navigation: Process Company News Blog Shop, and Shop is the most important, right? So you put it in some kind of special placement, and give it a button-like appearance with a special color and an outline. That doesn't necessarily make it easier to see! In some cases your users might just be looking through the "normal" navigation and not see "Shop". They will skip right over your large colorful button because it looks like a promotion, which they are trained to ignore. Something to consider anyway.
- amw-zero 9y ago
  That doesn't really apply to enterprise software. There are no ads there.
  - c22 9y ago
    It doesn't mean the training doesn't still kick in. I've missed things in email because someone has written the most important information in bold magenta on a line apart and my brain just scrolls right past it.
    - jschwartzi 9y ago
      I actually get annoyed enough by mixed bold and normal text that I can barely look at an email written with it.
Stratoscope 9y ago
Lawso Fux?
wcr3 9y ago
a horrid, self-defeating waste of time.
uxcolumbo 9y ago
Miller's law is outdated, there are newer studies that say working memory is around 4, very rarely 6. You can check your working memory with this little test mentioned in this tweet: https://mobile.twitter.com/UXColumbo/status/597838723263365120 https://mobile.twitter.com/UXColumbo/status/5978387232633651...
siproprio 9y ago
I call bullshit on all of these, with the possible exception of Fitt's Law and Tesler's Law. It seems that a lot of things these days are being extremely simplified beyond their point of usefulness and that things are always too small and too cumbersome to click, and require extra clicks because "wow such empty-ness and whitespace-ness".

Laws of UX

535 points by saketmehta 9y ago

throwaway081203 9y ago

The navigation on this site is so bad I created an account on HN just to mention it.

megous 9y ago
I wish more websites would go back to header/sidebar/content layouts and rather than trying to impress with all the gimmicky crap and random layout, would again start trying to inform.

dozzie 9y ago

You do realize that this "UX" thing was for decades called "ergonomics" and had a large body of research behind, do you?

radiorental 9y ago
Did you mean to say 'Usability' Ergonomics was and still is it's own thing. It very much relates to the physical world exclusively.
- dozzie 9y ago
  So a digital interface that is displayed on a screen of a desktop is "UX", but the very same digital interface that is displayed on a touchscreen attached to industrial machine is suddenly a totally different field "ergonomics"? Or does it need physical buttons to be called that?
  - daleco 9y ago
    In your case, there would be an overlap. A digital interface is UI. UX is multi disciplinary, it would focus more on the human centered process of building an application that fits the user needs. Ergonomic specialists would take into account the job (task), physical environment, user need, equipement (does the worker wear gloves...). Some are trained to be able to work on both fields (Human factor, cognitive engineer...) UX could also be called cognitive ergonomics.
- boomlinde 9y ago
  You interact with websites using physical means, so it's an important aspect of how users experience them. If a website has tiny buttons and icons, it might be hard to use with a phone. On a large screen computer with a precision pointing tool it might be preferable that they are small. If the information density is ten words per 2000 vertical pixels, it's going to be a pain in the ass with a scroll wheel, not so much on a tablet where scrolling has almost friction-less inertia. Low contrast might be bad if you are using a phone, great if you're in a dark room. If it's your job to improve the user experience, you're doing a bad job if ergonomics is not a consideration.
  - radiorental 9y ago
    My point (as a UXer) is that up to around 7 years ago we were generally known as practitioners in the field.of usability / user interface design / etc. The people in the field of Human factors and ergonomics pretty much still have those titles. There is a lot of overlap but my point is UXers were known as Usability folks on the whole
carlmr 9y ago
Problem being that web design is the most likely computer discipline to not actually have that many academics in it.
asdjasldkjkljd 9y ago
What's the point of your comment? You're deriding the author, who may or may not even read this, you're deriding UX as terminology and as a profession, you're oversimplifying the term ergonomics (it's specifically tied to working environments)... You're literally adding nothing but a smug attitude. Does this make you feel good? You could use your knowledge to be, at minimum, mildly informative or helpful to someone who might know less than you... but instead you're trying to project a false sense of superiority to complete strangers.
AltCtrl 9y ago
People misunderstand UX; ergonomics, usability, UI are parts of a full UX process

tomgp 9y ago

Is there a law of UX related to making a user scroll thousands of pixels to read 10 sentences?

tomgp 9y ago
Sorry, was facetious. The site looks lovely but if it's purpose was really to inform rather than to advertise the creators graphic design skills different decisions might have been made with respect to how the content is presented.
cyunem 9y ago
And maybe a law that says things have to load in slowly so it's possible to scroll past them before they appear?
- gkya 9y ago
  It's all about the experience, the exploration, the perdition of purpose as a tool of the establishment that conditions the individual to always be learning, for only then it can fruit him in his greedy machine of post-modern industry. Also, frankly, this is nearly a dadaist instance of a web page.
soneca 9y ago
I agree. And the laws are stated in complex sentences, so I really could use some more explanation. To learn more I have to click, go to another page, wait for a slow animation of the poster design and only then I could one paragraph explaining it further. And when I go back to the home page, it takes up to the top at the first law and I have to scroll it all over again to the point I was before. Awful experience. It looks like the author is a talented graphic designer that decided to compile the laws of UX without reading them (actually, I wouldn't know, as there was too much friction for me to read them all)
- yoz-y 9y ago
  At first I did not like that the 3rd law spoke about 'sites' when it could be applied to applications as well (or any other usable thing). Then I realized that these are most probably citations.

aserafini 9y ago

Ironically the site itself breaks the 3rd listed law, Jakob's law that states "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." because it breaks the back button. When navigating to a law and then hitting back the site sends you to the top of the list again. -

Lxr 9y ago
My vote for law 11 is “don’t use JavaScript unless it’s absolutely necessary”. That way the browser actually behaves the way you expect.
- rovek 9y ago
  Seems a broad law considering * Expectation is subjective and this forum are the minority * History-jacking done badly is not a reason to throw out a technology Random JavaScript hate is so last year
  - iapx88 9y ago
    > Random JavaScript hate is so last year It may well be, and with good reason. However, I still encounter people who think that JavaScript is only used for things like onMouseOver and find it difficult to accept that actually, their favourite app or site is entirely powered by JavaScript.
    - throwanem 9y ago
      Part of that may result from the fact that, when it's done properly, the fact that it contravenes no expectations makes it easy to overlook. Like the first rule of systems administration - when you do your job right, nobody notices; it's only when you screw something up that anyone remembers you exist.
    - paulryanrogers 9y ago
      Using Noscript or an equivalent can be very enlightening. IME many major sites do work without JS. My guess is for accessibility.

gkya 9y ago

Gkya's law of usefulness of a web page: The usefulness of a web page is a function of the multiplication of the number of laws it cites w/o any context whatsoever and the ratio of the lines of text such page contains in a screenful over how many it could've contained. > The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target. Wat? > The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. Certainly. But this is as relevant as general relativity to designing UX: the context is the key. What are you making, for what purpose, when, for whom? In this form in which it's put forth here, this can mean about anything. > 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. This is SOOO WRONG. I probably don't spend time on those sites because I'm in love with their UI, most of the time I'm fighting it with uBlock and patience. Many people are in prisons, that doesn't mean they like it. > 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 of us. Again, this means nothing. It's like, "stones are hard". Alright then, what am I supposed to do? Sand them? Hit my head on them? Throw them at passers-by? > Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend to be grouped together. Alright... > The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory. Yeah... > Any task will inflate until all of the available time is spent. Oh, thanks... > Users have a propensity to best remember the first and last items in a series. This is kind of immediately useful, but it's also neat that this rule is ignored in making this fancy bulleted list. > Tesler's Law, also known as The Law of Conservation of Complexity, states that for any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced. Agree. > The Von Restorff effect, also known as The Isolation Effect, predicts that when multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered. Certainly true. This web page is a good demonstration of bad UX: there certainly are some stuff there that could be useful, but no indication of how that can be possible is made, no explanation of what is before the eyes of the reader is there, the only means of interpretation provided to the reader is intuition, illegiblity is swiftly achieved by using black font on a nearly-black background, the viewport is used with absolutely no care to efficiency, and there is a menu that requires JavaScript to operate. This is like a parody of a page on UX laws. Put information on your web pages, people.

limaoscarjuliet 9y ago

The animation and no text displayed when a law is selected makes me think I'm waiting for loading to complete. It takes me couple of seconds to realize I need to scroll down to see the text.

sarenrae 9y ago

Welcome to this website about UX that took all of 2 seconds to annoy the shit out of me by giving me the impression that I am in some sort of foreground mode that I possibly might want to get out of to access the site...

janci 9y ago

Oh the irony, this site has terrible UX.

fredley 9y ago
<ul> {% for law in laws %} <li><strong>{{ law.name }}</strong> - {{ law.summary }} <a href="{{ law.wikipedia_url }}">{{ law.name }} on Wikipedia</a> </li> {% endfor %} </ul>
- audiolion 9y ago
  Jinja2 or Django template language?
  - oneweekwonder 9y ago
    > Jinja2 If I would guess;
  - aserafini 9y ago
    I think it's valid in both!

js8 9y ago

The desktop apps of the 90s was the heyday of UX. There are many positive things that could be said, but in the interest of brevity, I'll mention just two. Customizability. Users could set up their own hot keys, and even their own tool bars. Discoverability. Every UI widget (knob) had a tooltip, which explained its function. When a menu item was being browsed, there was a help line on the bottom that explained its function. Items that could be clicked were either visually distinct (such as buttons), or highlighted when hovering over them.

oblio 9y ago
> The desktop apps of the 90s was the heyday of UX for power users. Regular users didn't set up their own hotkeys or their toolbars. And they definitely didn't read the help or tool tips. The best UX for regular users, not interested in computers, is somewhere between websites and mobile apps.
- badsectoracula 9y ago
  Every time i hear about "Regular users" being the reason why modern UIs suck so much i get the feeling that regular users tend to be the enemy of actual users.
- reitanqild 9y ago
  That's because they don't get a chance anymore. Many of us have graduated from users to superusers to sysadmins or devs but modern software feel quite dumbed down compared to the options we had.
  - oblio 9y ago
    That's only because you were interested in IT, either as a career or as a hobby. Most people aren't.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Regular users are not interested in computers. They're interested in getting shit done, and getting on with their lives. Which is precisely what modern UX makes harder. You see, regular users aren't "neanderthal users". They have a brain and some amount of focus, and if they have to use an application/website more than few times, they'll figure out and appreciate any feature that lets them do their work more efficiently. Unfortunately, modern UX trends are all about removing productivity, turning tools into toys.

zv 9y ago

law so fux

dhimes 9y ago

I don't have the references right in front of me but I'm pretty sure the 7 +/- 2 in Law six is now thought to be 5 +/- 2. Wiki puts it at 4 +/- 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-term_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-term_memory

k_ 9y ago
Plus the associated illustration (on Laws of UX) seems to agree with you.
azhenley 9y ago
Any of Nelson Cowan's recent papers on the topic are good references for this smaller working memory.

raister 9y ago

what a load... Conservation, momentum, trying to force people to use physics concepts for UX, for crying out loud, is anybody taking this seriously?

daemonk 9y ago
Yeah seriously. Are people really that insecure with their job titles that they need to invent bullshit to make UX seem more scientific?

zython 9y ago

Really surprised that Gestalt Laws are not listed. (Law of Proximity is one of them). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology

m12k 9y ago

> Jacob'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. This should come with the footnote "unless you're Facebook". I wonder if they're fully aware of the power they wield in defining what normal/expected UX looks like to a so many people? (e.g. popularizing the mobile three lines 'hamburger' menu, then later moving away from it themselves)

arrrg 9y ago
Most people aren’t working on such a site. I think such a footnote would be dangerous since too many people would then assume that they are, in fact, Facebook. I mean, even site of huge companies are not necessarily the Facebook of anything, since that’s just not the use case. I would, for example, argue that this law applies perfectly and without any qualifications to Apple’s website which might see a lot of traffic, but it’s not exactly a site users spend most of their times on. (I would also argue that the website people actually do spend most time on exists in a certain context where the outside world will have some influence on how and how efficiently it is perceived and used. Obviously the website people do spend the most time on has a role in forming that context, but so does the web as a whole and every single site.) Oh, and I do think Facebook is very aware of that fact, but you still have to see that they are always wrestling with the status quo, i.e. for them the law takes the form of “Users spend most of their time on other sites or on the old variant of your site. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know or your site as it was.“ It’s not exactly easy for them, even if they get to be expectation-defining and their power is not absolute. The stakes are high.

tabeth 9y ago

Is there are place where you can simply download pages already "perfected" in its UX and you can simply add your own custom business logic to it? Something in this direction would be Bootstrap's templates: https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.0/examples/ https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.0/examples/ I dunno about you, but I'd rather not have to think about how to make project sites look like every time, but at the same time not necessarily use the same purchased template (because said template may not actually have a good UX). The fact that there are no standards here is part of the problem, IMO. Novelty drives views and therefore revenue so some sites are incentivized to be overly complex, imo.

rsoto 9y ago
UX can't be a plug-and-play solution, because it depends on your business and the user's goals. UX is figuring out what should be a main menu element and what shouldn't. Home and princing? Definitively. ToS and privacy policy? Not so much. UX is making some elements stand out as they are. What's the best way to show links to users? Spoiler alert: blue color and underline. But then what happens when your brand color is blue and the design has a blue background? Then links won't stand out. You could say that the UX plug-and-play solution is the way browsers handle the default CSS, add a few more styles and you got sites like CraigsList and Pinboard. And brutalism web design was born. But that's the visual part about UX, you have to figure out what your users are feeling, and for most starting sites, feeling good is the selling point, so you have to understand their psyche and design towards it.

ComputerGuru 9y ago

For a website all about UX, the site is almost impossible to use (at least on mobile), both from an intuitiveness perspective and from a technical one. I am entirely unsure what I’m supposed to click on, if what I’m seeing is an animation or a loading progress bar, the back button gave me a blank, black page, and everything on the site would be better if it were simply static html without all this JavaScript garbage that serves exactly zero functional purpose.

MaxBarraclough 9y ago
I was undecided until middle-click opened in current tab. That's not what I asked for. Let my browser do its job. Edit: And right-click behaves like left-click! Non-standard and annoying. So much for "Jakob's Law".
- culot 9y ago
  That is an unforgivable sin of web design: do not highjack the open-in-new-tab/new-window keystrokes.
  - nerflad 9y ago
    I've noticed some sites hijacking Alt-ArrowKeys now, too. Since backspace was deprecated, that means those websites prevent the user from using the keyboard to go Back. Very frustrating.
rkagerer 9y ago
Even on a desktop I find its UX annoying. It only feeds you a morsel of information at a time and you have to wait for stupid animation transitions in between. I read two panels then left. This information could easily have been presented in a normal HTML document.
- mcgarnagle 9y ago
  perhaps the author was going for the clockwork orange esc feel of discomfort so you should actively think about the ux you're experiencing

nkkollaw 9y ago

Very cool, but no law about not using dark grey fonts on black..?

callesgg 9y ago

Don't fuck with scrolling that should be a rule.

thestephen 9y ago

Here's my suggested addition, law 00, that this website really needs to follow: Please don't make your websites into huge Vogue ads on desktop. I have a 27" monitor, I can fit more than 4 lines of text on my screen.

have_faith 9y ago

Did anyone else enjoy it for what it was? I get the criticisms, you want the web to be homogenised and free from any form of expression that doesn't present every piece of information in it's most human-machine digestible form, I get it. But it was pretty simple to use and the flair was minimal. I don't understand the pitchforks. There's a few minor annoyances like the back button not working as expected, but they are very minor for a site so small.

cptskippy 9y ago
> I get the criticisms, you want the web to be homogenised and free from any form of expression that doesn't present every piece of information in it's most human-machine digestible form, I get it. You don't get it, you just minimized and dismissed everyone's objections to this site. As a power point presentation, this site is great. As a line item on your resume, sure. As a resource that someone can use and reference, it's awful.
- superhuzza 9y ago
  Right, and it's clearly not a reference website, considering it's a random selection of a few UX guidelines.
  - wldcordeiro 9y ago
    It looks like an individual's side project to learn a few tools and make something sort of fun and informational. Maybe it's not the immediate perfect solution of all things but so what.
    - superhuzza 9y ago
      Agreed, I thought it was kind of cool. I work in UX, so some aspects bother me - but it probably serves it's purpose well.
- michaelcampbell 9y ago
  As a truck, a car is also awful.

kleff 9y ago

Tesler's law really rings true in non-UX environments too. I have worked with several people insisting that you can somehow remove complexity by wrapping it in more levels of abstraction, which is utterly infuriating. Sometimes you really just have to accept that certain things are complex, and deal with it.

yoz-y 9y ago

After all the criticism here I took a shot of paraphrasing the website in a page length post: https://yozy.net/2018/01/10-laws-of-ux-digested/ https://yozy.net/2018/01/10-laws-of-ux-digested/ A kind of an opinionated tl;dr

vezycash 9y ago
Your interpretation helped me understand most of the laws. I hope mods replaces yours with the original. Thanks.
maxxxxx 9y ago
That's how it should have been done with decent UX. Simple and easy to read.
MBCook 9y ago
Excellent. Add some examples of good/bad use of each law and you’d have a fantastic resource.
_lex 9y ago
Honestly, just make it into a bullet point list: your reformulation of the ideas is WAY clearer and requires no additional explanations. Maybe add graphical examples if you must, but referring back to the text of the original site actually makes yours worse.
- yoz-y 9y ago
  Thank you. I wanted to keep parts of the original mainly because I have merely interpreted the rules, however the work of compiling them, finding the links and so on was done by the original author(s).
reaperducer 9y ago
68K. Down from 331.
dsego 9y ago
You don't have the posters.

GordonS 9y ago

What font is this using? That weird mark on all the "st" pairs is irritating! Maybe we need a number 11, "don't use weird fonts"

bhauer 9y ago

Complaints about the web site itself aside, I'd like to encourage designers to exercise more restraint when applying some of these laws. Most poignant for me is the misapplication and zealous over-application of Hick's Law. If you review the detailed link provided by the site [1] you will see some commentary about when not to use Hick's law. Personally, I would significantly expand where Hick's law should not be applied. Examine the example provided that compares two remote controls: one with a common suite of buttons, and another with a dramatically reduced set of buttons. The site seems to suggest that at the very least the stripped remote yields ratings of "better user experience" from users. I would argue that such ratings alone should not drive UX decision-making. In my life, I have seen the trend of simplifying user interfaces chip away at functionality in virtually every interaction I have with technology, and I don't feel better for it. I really miss the opportunity to more finely control devices and applications according to my needs and wants. The most recent technological epoch—focused so much on mobile devices as it is—has been among the most pronounced with its stripping of functionality (ostensibly to make things easier to use on tiny displays). I often feel that this law is misapplied, perhaps subconsciously as an excuse to not build more comprehensive functionality. Why build a hard button that can turn on and off Closed Captioning when you can just put that in a menu, or better yet, not implement Closed Captioning at all? (To be clear: it can be perfectly fine to hide infrequently-used features in special menus. I use about:config in Firefox routinely. What bothers me most is that, for example, the browser on my phone doesn't have a tenth the options of Firefox and certainly doesn't have anything like about:config. The argument this is because it's a small screen device seems hollow to me; the real reason almost always rings of laziness and contempt for customization by users. Sometimes it will be spun as a means to reduce testing time—laziness by another name—as if mobile software has had any track record of being tested more thoroughly versus old desktop software.) Designers, hear my plea: Let's start pushing back on Hick's Law. Yes, in cases of needing a fast decision, a stripped user interface is agreeable. But in many cases, we're not acutely rushed while using our devices. Generally, I want more functionality from technology, not less. Stop using a UX law as cover for laziness and reduced feature sets. [1] https://uxplanet.org/design-principles-hicks-law-quick-decision-making-3dcc1b1a0632 https://uxplanet.org/design-principles-hicks-law-quick-decis...

intrasight 9y ago

laythea 9y ago

Not a fan of the website UI. Eg. For me, having to have a big down arrow telling the user further content is down, is a UI fail.

JepZ 9y ago

The 3rd law is just wrong. Yes, we spend more time on other sites and therefore, we are used to the UX patterns used on other sites, but that doesn't mean that all other pages are doing good. Actually, we do not choose the sites we are on purely based on UX patterns. Instead we choose the sites by the service/functionality they are offering. So assuming that other pages are doing good UX and inventing new patterns will irritate users might be a good advise for junior UX designers, but UX experts should always question the status quo and search for improvements. So defining it as a law to stick to the UX patterns of the majority of sites is just wrong.

JepZ 9y ago
As the down voter did not care to leave a comment, I try to give an example: For years we were seeing the burger icon (3 horizontal bars) as an icon for menus. It took quite a while until it became a well known standard to add some 'Menu' text next to it (as you can see it on the Laws of UX page). So for years we had a pattern on most sites which was not optimal. Just using it because everybody else was using it, didn't solve the problem that a majority of users did not understand or knew the icon.

anonymousab 9y ago

One HCI book I read had a point that relates to Tesler's law: If your change requires users to make more clicks to perform the same task or action, it is probably a bad change.

anthonyshort 9y ago

The reaction on Hacker News compared to the reaction on Designer News is great. I think the problem people are struggling with is that it's a site created mostly for fun and delight, but the message is about "UX", which people generally think of as a way to maximize efficiency. Products don't always need to be relentlessly efficient to be considered useful or "good". Some products are created for you to just enjoy.

neogodless 9y ago
[0] https://www.designernews.co/stories/90954-laws-of-ux https://www.designernews.co/stories/90954-laws-of-ux Super positive. We love it. Blows my mind. But that's the point - it's really like two very, very different ways of thinking about, approaching/creating and evaluating projects (in this case, a web site.) On one side, they have "an eye for design" that really appreciates this novel UI design, but on this other side, we have that eye for efficiency and... ahem... user experience. (Rather than how a designer might experience something.)
- zzzcpan 9y ago
  Oh, thanks for the link, this gives it a lot more context. A website made just to show his designer friends who are also pressured by the market to not value UX. Makes sense they romanticize UX and don't actually bother with it themselves.
  - anthonyshort 9y ago
    That's not really the point we were making and I'm not sure you have a correct understanding of UX, as you're conflating UX and visual design. There's no pressure in the market to not value UX. Everyone wants and needs that. If anything there are pressures to only value efficiency rather than delight. Sometimes "fun" isn't efficient.
swearwolves 9y ago
If it was created as a portfolio piece, I'd say it's successful. If it was created as useful and repeatable reference for the digital product/service/whatever industry, it falls short.

adambmedia 9y ago

I find the layout of poster downloads on the detail pages of the individual laws, with the text of the law and lawofux.com tag on the right side, unfortunate. The layout of the posters on the top-level page are 100x more evocative and elegant. They are the posters I want.

acbart 9y ago

Miller's Law - The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory. I actually needed to research this claim for my dissertation, and found that some researchers believe it is more complex than as presented by Miller. The number can fluctuate depending on what is being stored, the individual, and a number of other factors. A worthwhile starting point is the Wikipedia Page [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus...

swearwolves 9y ago

As a portfolio piece, it's great. I don't really care that it's not the most usable thing in the world - the underlying concept is sound, it's easy to see a lot of effort went into the design and execution, and the site looks great! Buuuut that's about all it's good for in it's current form. Unfortunately, the way something looks is but a tiny, tiny factor in the scope of the overall UX. This totally falls apart as a reference piece that I can bookmark and go back to from time to time. I think this is also compounded by the fact that the content of the site is centered around preaching good UX - but doesn't adhere to it's own advice. I can forgive lapses in UX thinking on software engineering blogs or the latest and greatest crypto forum...but if your site about UX has bad UX, you're in for a bad time - especially on HN.

jwdunne 9y ago

It would be better if, instead of a useless albeit pretty icon, there was a brief description of what the law is about. Fitts's Law tells me nothing about what it is other than its a UX "law" coined by someone called Fitts.

zzzcpan 9y ago
Here's a good article about this law, with many examples: http://asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html http://asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html
- jwdunne 9y ago
  Wasn't really about the law itself. The same applies to all laws listed. I want to know which ones are most relevant to me. I'd like to see a summary for each one so I can make that decision before loading another page. Otherwise, I needlessly have to click on them, make a decision and click back if not. This is similar to how a blog typically shows an excerpt for each post on the blog index. See Jakob's law.

erAck 9y ago

I know it's Laws of UX, but I first read the domain name as Law of Sux.

AtTheLast 9y ago

The site looks nice, but I had to do way to much clicking to see the information. I gave up after the thrid law.

pkamb 9y ago

The "next" button is extremely difficult to find. I wonder if this site was user-tested. Nice, huge, Fitts' Law-optimized button though.

lucaspottersky 9y ago

i loved the fact that a site about UX doesn't allow me to open the links in new tabs... sooo annoying! damn it!

JonasJSchreiber 9y ago

I happen to think this is freaking awesome

foobaw 9y ago

Wish there were actual examples of each one instead of just an explanation. UI is cool but UX is poor.

Kenji 9y ago

Tesler's Law, also known as The Law of Conservation of Complexity, states that for any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be reduced. Reminds me a lot of Kolmogorov complexity.

phantarch 9y ago

A new "Law of UX" should be coined: "Visual design is not UX."

uses 9y ago

"Make the most important thing stand out" I'd be careful with this one and be sure you understand what you are doing on a case-by-case basis. I have noticed a thing which I'm not sure there's a name for, but I call it Emphasis Blindness. Similar to Banner Blindness, I think users today are often trained by habit to ignore things that stand out as some kind of obvious promotional item. For example, you have 5 items in your navigation: Process Company News Blog Shop, and Shop is the most important, right? So you put it in some kind of special placement, and give it a button-like appearance with a special color and an outline. That doesn't necessarily make it easier to see! In some cases your users might just be looking through the "normal" navigation and not see "Shop". They will skip right over your large colorful button because it looks like a promotion, which they are trained to ignore. Something to consider anyway.

amw-zero 9y ago
That doesn't really apply to enterprise software. There are no ads there.
- c22 9y ago
  It doesn't mean the training doesn't still kick in. I've missed things in email because someone has written the most important information in bold magenta on a line apart and my brain just scrolls right past it.
  - jschwartzi 9y ago
    I actually get annoyed enough by mixed bold and normal text that I can barely look at an email written with it.

Stratoscope 9y ago

Lawso Fux?

wcr3 9y ago

a horrid, self-defeating waste of time.

uxcolumbo 9y ago

Miller's law is outdated, there are newer studies that say working memory is around 4, very rarely 6. You can check your working memory with this little test mentioned in this tweet: https://mobile.twitter.com/UXColumbo/status/597838723263365120 https://mobile.twitter.com/UXColumbo/status/5978387232633651...

siproprio 9y ago

I call bullshit on all of these, with the possible exception of Fitt's Law and Tesler's Law. It seems that a lot of things these days are being extremely simplified beyond their point of usefulness and that things are always too small and too cumbersome to click, and require extra clicks because "wow such empty-ness and whitespace-ness".