
Laws of UX - seesawtron
https://lawsofux.com/
======
Waterluvian
The site is beautiful and I couldn’t do it. But I’ll still be a bit
judgemental. It breaks my first law of UX: don’t be self serving.

The first screen is a long scroll of 20 elegant looking blocks and titles none
of which mean anything on their own. I have to click on each and sit through
some superfluous animation before I can even get access to the explanation.

Because of the animation, t he natural flow of swiping back on my phone
results in a really janky transition.

I have to say, I love the style of these graphics. Minimalism I guess? Reminds
me of the University of Waterloo during my childhood.

~~~
joeyspn
> I love the style of these graphics. Minimalism I guess?

It's a "Memphis style" variant. Pretty trendy these days. Now the industry is
starting to move to "Neumorphism".

~~~
ardy42
> It's a "Memphis style" variant. Pretty trendy these days. Now the industry
> is starting to move to "Neumorphism".

Really? I thought Memphis style was this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_Group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_Group)
and this: [https://www.megapixl.com/illustration-for-hipsters-
memphis-s...](https://www.megapixl.com/illustration-for-hipsters-memphis-
style-illustration-67848727) (e.g. "80s style").

This website is not giving me that impression. If anything, it reminds me of a
style I associate with the 60s or 70s (namely a sans serif font coupled with
geometric graphics that use multiple shades of the same bright color).

Edit: I think it's closer to the "Swiss/International Style":
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Swiss/International+Style+Gr...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Swiss/International+Style+Graphic+Design),
but I'm by no means an expert.

~~~
limograf
It's ITS derived but the nearer referent is Material via Penguin Book covers
from around 1960 to 1975, like the classic Hare Sitting Up:
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/joekral/231480092/in/album-721...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/joekral/231480092/in/album-72157594264351021/)

------
muzani
Here's the straightforward plaintext version:

1\. UI > UX.

2\. Respond in less than 400 ms.

3\. Make buttons clickable.

4\. Make it simpler.

5\. Copy functionality and UX off other sites.

6\. Draw borders around similar functionality.

7\. Simpler imagery is better.

8\. Users think objects next to each other do similar things.

9\. Similar items close together look like one big thing.

10\. Things that look the same (color, font, etc) will look like they do the
same thing.

11\. The average person can remember 5-9 things at once.

12\. Remove all unnecessary elements.

13\. Focus on the 20% that does 80% of things.

14\. Any task will inflate until all of the available time is spent.

15\. People judge the experience by its beginning and end.

16\. Be tolerant to whatever actions the user may take.

17\. People remember the first and last items in a series.

18\. You can't reduce all the complexity.

19\. When one thing stands out from others in a group, it will be remembered.

20\. People remember incomplete tasks, i.e. use progress bars.

4 and 12 are identical. 14 has nothing to do with UX or UI. 15, 11, and 17 are
the same. 18 is an excuse masquerading as a Law. From 11-18, it feels a lot of
these are pulled in from some Tim Ferriss book or some generic self-help Seven
Secrets of Highly Influential People. Perhaps it believes its 15th and 17th
law so much that it thinks it can hide fluff in the middle of the list.

It establishes credibility with a lawsofux.com domain them then proceeds to
wreck it by violating its 7th law. It does solidly prove its first law, that
if you have a pretty enough site, everyone will believe it.

~~~
read_if_gay_
Your critique is based on your interpretation of the laws which is in many
cases clearly incorrect.

Take for example 15. It doesn’t say people judge by the beginning and the end,
but by the peak and the end. Or 4 - representing Hick’s law as “make it
simpler” misses so much nuance that the key point is completely missed.

It rather seems like you barely skimmed the page before deciding to shit on it
for arbitrary reasons.

~~~
muzani
> It rather seems like you barely skimmed the page before deciding to shit on
> it for arbitrary reasons.

"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."

If a website violates its own laws, that brings into question the credibility
of the laws, or the credibility of the author of the website. Without
credibility, it feels like a waste of time to do anything more than skim...
perhaps this is a failure of UX?

Fair point about 15, but neither you nor the website managed to express Hick's
Law any better than KISS.

~~~
read_if_gay_
So an example of an application of Hick's Law is when you have a huge country
list dropdown. Per Hick's Law we know that presenting users with many choices
is bad because it'll take them forever to make their pick. But if there's
going to be a small number of options that the vast majority of users will
choose, such as with countries it might be the US and a few EU countries, you
can improve this by putting those countries first and presenting an
alphabetically sorted list of the rest after them.

You can see how this doesn't just boil down to "make it simpler". And many of
your summaries similarly miss the point.

I do admit that the website doesn't elaborate on the concepts very much. For
example, if I hadn't known about Hick's law beforehand, I might have arrived
at the same conclusion as you. But they do link further reading which seems to
do the job of explaining the laws in detail. So I think the website is a nice
reference if you go the extra mile and look at the links.

~~~
jimktrains2
> But if there's going to be a small number of options that the vast majority
> of users will choose, such as with countries it might be the US and a few EU
> countries, you can improve this by putting those countries first and
> presenting an alphabetically sorted list of the rest after them.

I hate when people do this. It messes with selection by keystroke. It's
frustrating and breaks the default means of using a drop-down box.

~~~
playpause
Agreed. I’d add there’s something perverse and elitist about ‘solving’ this
problem by making it easier for one group of users and more difficult for the
rest.

~~~
read_if_gay_
Ranking common countries first only seems like an issue because of our
sensitive political climate. Or do you still think it's "perverse and elitist"
to put commonly bought bus tickets before more rarely bought options like
season tickets in ticket machine menus?

~~~
playpause
I don't think that's a good analogy. But my comment reads way harsher than I
intended it. I've probably done it myself in the past – sticking a handful of
key countries at the top of the selector. My point is it isn't good design,
it's a lazy hack. And I think if I was a user from one of the 2nd tier
countries, I'd find it pretty elitist. The ticket machine analogy doesn't
apply.

~~~
read_if_gay_
Why not? It’s not even an analogy, it’s exactly the same hack applied to a
different scenario.

------
jakear
I cannot even begin to fathom how a ux website that literally touts "don't
make your users wait more than 400ms" as it's #2 rule also has

\- 400ms css transition

\- network load of new page

\- scrolling down to view content

\- another 400ms transition to go back to main content

as its primary mechanism of interaction... is the irony totally lost on them?
Or did they drink the #1 kool aid to the extent that they believe their
"design" will outweigh their myriad UX failures?

~~~
dahart
None of those things you listed are in conflict with rule #2.

The length of an animation is not the same as making your users wait for an
initial response to your input. The rule is talking about how fast the
computer appears to _acknowledge_ and _begin_ responding to a user input, it
is not talking about how fast any given task is completed. The wait is the
length of time between clicking the button and when the screen _starts_ to
animate.

Animation you have to wait for can sometimes be a bad design choice on a page,
and I'm not a big fan of overuse of css transitions. But a navigation
transition helps the user keep mental track of where they are, and it
specifically signals that the computer is responding to your input. The
animation itself here doesn't break the Doherty threshold, it does the
opposite, it _meets_ the Doherty threshold.

Network loading of a new page is unavoidable (out of the control of the page
author), is absolutely standard practice for internet apps (see Jakob's law),
and your browser (not the page) is what handles the interaction. The browsers
adhere to the rules listed here to every extent possible, and they respond to
page loads instantly by showing you a loading spinner, a blank page, and
allowing interactions like cancelling the load while loading. Again, the
interaction criteria here is that the computer acknowledges your input, not
that it is required to finish something that can take time.

Scrolling is another interaction that meets rule #2, it doesn't break the
rule. The rule is not about design or layout. When scrolling, if the page is
moving in response to your input, then it's meeting the rule. And scrolling is
one of the things browsers bend over backward to make as smooth and fast as
possible.

~~~
jakear
Response to "making users wait for an animation is okay" here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24031824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24031824)

> Network loading of a new page is unavoidable (out of the control of the page
> author)

Nope, the author had complete control over how much information they wanted to
show on the main page vs the details page. In desktop view they show the
single-sentence descriptions on the main page, in mobile they don't. So
they've forced mobile users to wait for the network load (potentially much
more than 400ms) completely unnecessarily.

> Scrolling is another interaction that meets rule #2, it doesn't break the
> rule.

Sure, it doesn't break rule #2 specifically, but it does break #3. And, more
importantly, it's shitty UX and has no place on a "Rules of UX" website,
except maybe as a counterexample.

~~~
dahart
> I'd probably prefer 400ms of a static screen to 400ms of animation.

The alternative here is no visual response to a click at all. I'm not okay
with that, and I _seriously_ doubt you'd be okay with it in general. Most
people aren't (this has been shown). A 400ms delay after button clicks and
scrolling and other interactions is an indication that your input was not
received, and it feels intolerable to people today. The 400ms standard here
was set 40 years ago. Today software feels completely broken if it doesn't
respond with _something_ in under 100ms, and desktop browsers typically do
something within 33ms.

> the author had complete control over how much information they wanted to
> show

That's irrelevant. The browser _does_ respond to your page load request
instantly, with a blank page and a spinner. It doesn't break the rule.

Again, you can criticize the choices with your own opinion at a subjective
level, this doesn't mean the authors aren't following their own advice. It
feels like you're looking for reasons to justify not liking the page. You're
free to not like the page, I won't disagree with that. What I disagree with is
the reason given.

> Sure, it doesn't break rule #2 specifically, but it does break #3.

It seems like you're moving on to misunderstanding rule #3. Scrolling and
clicking does not apply to Fitts' Law.

EDIT: I said scrolling doesn't apply to Fitts' law, and I meant that
specifically as a reponse to, and in the context of the suggestion being made
here by the parent: scrolling to find a new unknown target _plus_ acquiring a
new target, _plus_ moving to click on the new target.

Fitts' Law has been studied on scrolling alone, for example:
[https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-
content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-
content/uploads/2016/02/Scrolling_CHI02.pdf)

Extending the law to include the number of interactions is going to be
tautological in the sense that if number of manual interactions is your
"distance" then of course more will take longer. Including targets that are
unknown is just beyond the scope of what has been studied and shown, I'm
saying it is not really in the spirit of Fitts' law.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law)

~~~
jakear
Are you _honestly_ , and I mean _honestly honestly_ , trying to argue that
needing to scroll then move your mouse to reach a target can _not_ be thought
of as a target being further away when it comes to Fitts' law and the
relationship between distance and time to acquire a target? It seems to me
that you are choosing to focus on the specific text used in a rule as opposed
to the concept that rule is trying to convey. I don't enjoy arguing over that
sort of thing whatsoever, so I'll have to call it a day and go back to
spreading mulch. Good day :)

~~~
albedoa
There isn't anything to be argued. You said that the scrolling violates Rule
#3, which is about Fitts's law specifically. Scrolling has nothing to do with
Fitts's law.

~~~
pbreit
Scrolling absolutely has to do with Fitt's law. Not only is the target further
away, it's constantly moving.

~~~
albedoa
You should read and take to heart this comment by dahart, especially the last
paragraph:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24032182](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24032182)

You've been confidently wrong about the only two rules you've commented on.

~~~
pbreit
I either disagree with or do not understand either of your sentences.

~~~
albedoa
The trend is unflattering for you one way or another.

------
spanhandler
The only site my tech-challenged dad can kind-of use well is Craigslist. Plain
text, accessible, good hierarchies, nothing buried or nested, fast, and,
crucially, everything is in the same place every time he visits. Some of the
best UX on the Web.

~~~
FridgeSeal
It feels like modern website design conflates “better UX” with “surface level
attractiveness”

Craigslist is a great example, original reddit is another example: my UI/UX
designer friend considers original reddit to be quote “ugly and horrible”, and
while there definitely could be some improvements, the reddit redesign (which
I know my friend would come up with something similar to) is quite literally
orders of magnitude worse, but is aesthetically “nicer”.

Original reddit looks ugly, but everything you want from an interface is there
once you get through a 3 minute learning curve: information dense, enough
white space (but not too much), consistent behaviour, fast, respects
scrolling, etc etc.

Where did we go “wrong” with web design that what we have now is seemingly
worse? And what does a good balance of “actually functionally useful” and
“aesthetically pleasing” look like?

~~~
jakear
I personally love the new reddit design: it’s so miserable to use that it has
broken my reddit addiction almost entirely!

Now I just need HN to do something similar and maybe I’ll get back to being a
productive member of society ;)

~~~
DangitBobby
The site looks and performs fine to me with the redesign. The problems I have
with it are the obnoxious "open in app!" Pop-up and the subreddit preview that
interrupts the comment section... Totally unacceptable.

~~~
jakear
Those two are the precise reasons I left actually.

------
mekoka
_1\. Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more
usable._

As a non-designer who's had to fight many designers on this, I'd like to draw
your attention to the fact that this is about _perception_. It's about a
user's first impression regarding usability _prior_ to actually using the
system. It's not an actual impression based on their experience after
interacting with it. That impression can quickly evaporate the moment they try
to do anything with the interface. If time and money have to be allocated to
develop a product, use them wisely. The properties of this principle seem to
be more relevant to marketing and advertising than actual UX.

I believe that the wrong take-away from reading this law would be that
improved esthetics implies improved usability. Attempting to place esthetics
and function on the same pedestal would be a mistake. When it comes to
usability, function is superior to esthetics and should almost always be given
priority, no matter how ugly.

I agree that esthetics can and should be used in a way that it supports
function, but as you add to it, there will always be a point of negative
return (functionally speaking). If you misunderstand what that law is saying
you might be misled into thinking that esthetic climax and usability climax
are on the same locus. I think we can agree that something can often still be
made even more beautiful way past the point where it's almost completely
unusable. Adversely, you might be called into making something uglier in order
for it to become useful again. Better get comfortable with the idea.

~~~
bobbles
I feel like #1 is the reason that absolutely every useful web app is slowly
becoming less useful to the people that use it every day by filling all the
actual usable space with white to make their screenshots look better while all
the power users get more and more irritated.

Even 'compact' views which seem to be a throwaway effort to alleviate these
are becoming more and more spacious and forcing scrolling even on huge
screens.

------
myth2018
I often see the second law being broken by the first (or a misinterpretation
of it): in the eagerness to make the site look beautiful, the designer make it
slow, either deliberately with animations, either inadvertently by increasing
load times.

Also, I commonly see Miller's and Zeigarnik Effect being disregarded: although
our working memories are not so great, we possess some and we can retain some
basic information about our workflow. Then, IMHO there's more harm than good
in putting a lot of visual clues, drawers, panes over panes etc. so that
navigation is "improved".

Speaking particularly about form-based enterprise applications, I keep
thinking that some important empirically learned lessons from the last 40
years are simply being thrown away. Simple, correct and, most important, FAST
interfaces trumps everything else, even if it's a TUI.

Oh, and regular users also can and ENJOY using the keyboard -- a tool which is
being deprecated in this mistake of trying to create a uniform experience
between desktop and mobile.

~~~
JamesBarney
I'm not entirely convinced simple is better for enterprise apps. I'm a
consultant who has to jump around between a lot of project management tools
like Asana, Jira, and Azure devops and the simpler the interfaces make me far
more frustrated.

They all have pretty much the same functionality, but some hide functionality
for UI's sake. Then anytime I need to do something new, instead of looking
around a busy screen, I'm sifting through a bunch of websites I found on
google.

~~~
myth2018
I think simplicity doesn't necessarily mean having less widgets on the screen.

If, by removing widgets, those interfaces are making you to perform more steps
and to think more to find and execute the functionality you need, then I'd say
those interfaces are getting more complex actually.

Besides, this is another common mistake in current UX trends, IMO. They seem
to assume that interfaces can always be simpler, as if there weren't
fundamental bottom limits to complexity; and, to make things even worse, they
remove widgets, replace text with icons etc., seeming to believe in a positive
correlation between complexity and amount of stuff in the screen

------
tlow
This is not new and is almost entirely covered in two reference resources I
use as a designer.

1\. Universal Principles of Design
[https://g.co/kgs/X19MeR](https://g.co/kgs/X19MeR)

2\. The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin
[https://g.co/kgs/JfdBkB](https://g.co/kgs/JfdBkB)

~~~
jhardy54
Please just post the URL instead of using a redirect link, especially if
you're just doing a google search for the words you posted.

1\.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Universal+Principles+of+Desi...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Universal+Principles+of+Design)

2\.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Humane+Interface](https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Humane+Interface)

~~~
tlow
I just used Google's built in "share" button, is that incorrect in some way?

~~~
summitsummit
less friendly as it obscures the destination to the user. it could have been a
rickroll or something pertinent given the url

~~~
bananaface
I think this is bikeshedding.

Edit: bear in mind vanilla search URLs include personal info, which you need
to know how to identify & strip.

------
strogonoff
Usage of monospace font and questionable accessibility practices put into
question the authority of this resource.

That aside, what most UI/UX rules fail to capture is that our experience of X
exists over time and in larger context. Aside from things with near-zero
intended lifespan (which this one may well be—I won’t pretend I know author’s
intention), it is not only (and not so much) important how a product or
resource is experienced right at this moment, but also how it will feel after
a while, how it would evolve, how it interoperates with other software or
resources (including search engines), what resources are required to maintain
it, etc. True beauty arises from functionality and sustainability.

------
falcrist
What's with the oceans of empty space between everything? Who likes this?

Please put more than one thing on the screen at a time, especially when those
things are links that lead to the actual content.

Also, when I click through to one of the laws, there's no indication that I
have to scroll down, so I'm clicking around for a few seconds like an idiot
trying to figure out what to do.

I feel like I'm crazy... Is this _really_ considered good UX?

------
ggcdn
The 0th law of UX: Any website that attempts to describe good UX will itself
be criticized for bad UX.

~~~
hmmazoids
Well yeah you better preach what you teach or look like an idiot

~~~
Hasu
HN users, on the whole, are terrible UX critics who have no idea what they're
talking about on the subject.

The average HN user probably:

\- knows their way around a terminal

\- understands default browser behavior in depth

\- has the programmer's mentality of 'everything should be governed by
universal logical rules that apply equally everywhere'

The truth is, this is not how most users think. Good UX for a cli application
is not the same as good UX for a website. If you think of websites in terms of
what programmers think good UX is, you get... HN and Craigslist and all the
other things that HN users typically think are fantastic user experiences,
because they meet their expectations. These applications are also almost
uniformly ugly. This actually makes perfect sense, and for these users, this
is fantastic UX.

But what makes UX good is that the target audience can easily use the
software. That's it. There's no such thing as an 'intuitive user interface'.
Clicking on stuff in computers is not natively intuitive to humans. There are
only familiar and unfamiliar interfaces. Every interface we haven't seen
before is unfamiliar and 'terrible' at first glance. People will train
themselves to use and love extremely bad interfaces, or refuse to use very
good interfaces that are difficult to learn. The HN user is someone who has
typically put a lot of effort into learning how computers work and how web
browsers work by default, so they develop intuitions like, "If a website
breaks the default browser behavior, it's bad UX." And for them, that's true,
but what makes the default browser UX better than an alternative, other than
that you already know it? Now maybe it actually is better, and I can think of
many examples of websites that change default behavior in ways that are
absolutely worse. But I've also seen websites do cool things with
scrolljacking that aren't inherently wrong because they defied expectations
for 3 seconds.

Every application has to be learned by the user. How easy it is to learn it
depends on the background knowledge and experiences of the user, so it's very
very hard, if not completely impossible, to develop a UX that will be good for
every possible user. But if some UX isn't good FOR YOU, that doesn't mean that
it's bad, it might just mean you aren't the target audience.

~~~
boomlinde
_> If you think of websites in terms of what programmers think good UX is, you
get... HN and Craigslist and all the other things that HN users typically
think are fantastic user experiences, because they meet their expectations.
These applications are also almost uniformly ugly. This actually makes perfect
sense, and for these users, this is fantastic UX._

So would you argue that the Craigslist experience is only good for those with
the "programmer's mentality"? "Ugly" is perhaps a smaller factor in UX than
designers account for.

 _> And for them, that's true, but what makes the default browser UX better
than an alternative, other than that you already know it?_

Nothing, that's just it: you already know it. What you call "programmer's
mentality" is actually fundamental to human cognition. In making sense of
things we use what we've already made sense of. The more we can rely on our
existing knowledge to figure something out, the less cognitive friction there
will be.

The cost of surprise can certainly be outweighed by other factors, or surprise
in itself can be exploited to usefully convey something, but in my experience
it is not generally used to these effects. For every zooming interface or
slideshow where scrolljacking might make perfect sense there are hundreds
where those three seconds of defied expectations are wasted to implement
something that is either useless or entirely detrimental to usability.

 _> But if some UX isn't good FOR YOU, that doesn't mean that it's bad, it
might just mean you aren't the target audience._

Or I am the target audience and the designers have failed to design for the
target audience. Or I am not the target audience only because the designer has
failed to identify and characterize their target audience correctly. Or the
designers primarily work with making business-required anti-features bearable.
Or they're optimizing for first impressions and not long term usability. Or
they're optimizing for generating more work opportunities ahead of themselves.

To decidedly say that you, our user, is not our intended target audience seems
like a conclusion that must be backed with _a lot_ of data, something which
IME not a lot of organizations can muster. From that perspective these
alternatives seem more likely.

~~~
Hasu
I don't think you're arguing against what I actually said.

> _So would you argue that the Craigslist experience is only good for those
> with the "programmer's mentality"?_

No, I think I was clear - I think the Craiglist experience is good for people
who are familiar with simple sites like Craigslist, but not for all people.
Craigslist has a very simple UX, so it would be hard to find someone who had
trouble using it. It would be easy to find someone who finds the UX
unpleasant, because I personally find it unpleasant because it's very ugly.

> _Nothing, that 's just it: you already know it. What you call "programmer's
> mentality" is actually fundamental to human cognition. In making sense of
> things we use what we've already made sense of. The more we can rely on our
> existing knowledge to figure something out, the less cognitive friction
> there will be._

Here, you're just agreeing with me, except that I didn't call the
"programmer's mentality" the general rule of familiarity, it was the general
rule that all things must behave according to the same rules.

> _The cost of surprise can certainly be outweighed by other factors, or
> surprise in itself can be exploited to usefully convey something, but in my
> experience it is not generally used to these effects. For every zooming
> interface or slideshow where scrolljacking might make perfect sense there
> are hundreds where those three seconds of defied expectations are wasted to
> implement something that is either useless or entirely detrimental to
> usability._

I'm not claiming anywhere that it's impossible to make a bad UX, either by
breaking previously known rules OR by following them, I'm claiming that good
UX is context based and the rule of "scrolljacking is always bad" isn't true.
You seem to agree with me here.

> _Or I am the target audience and the designers have failed to design for the
> target audience. Or I am not the target audience only because the designer
> has failed to identify and characterize their target audience correctly. Or
> the designers primarily work with making business-required anti-features
> bearable. Or they 're optimizing for first impressions and not long term
> usability. Or they're optimizing for generating more work opportunities
> ahead of themselves._

Sure, bad UX exists, and these are plausible reasons why it might happen. I
never claimed that no UX ever was bad for any reason.

> _To decidedly say that you, our user, is not our intended target audience
> seems like a conclusion that must be backed with a lot of data, something
> which IME not a lot of organizations can muster. From that perspective these
> alternatives seem more likely._

Here you're either misunderstanding me or knocking down a straw man. I didn't
use the word 'decidedly', I said it 'might mean'. I also wasn't focused on the
perspective of the organization or person creating a user experience, I was
focusing on the person consuming it and criticizing it, without any regard for
_everyone else_ who also consumes it and whether they might agree that the UX
is 'obviously' terrible.

To give a concrete example: Slack recently released a redesign, and I
personally hate it and many of the interactions it created. Most people I know
love it and had no issues adapting to the changes they made. Did Slack release
a bad UX? I would argue no, even though I _personally_ do not like the UX they
created, because I think I am a rare case and for the majority of their
userbase, they made the correct call and improved the experience. It seems to
me that most arguments on HN about UX boil down to "I immediately closed the
tab because it hijacked my scrolling, terrible UX." I'm saying that's a bad
argument, and your personal enjoyment is not a complete picture of what makes
an experience good or bad for the complete audience of users.

------
rkagerer
_Aesthetically pleasing design can mask usability problems_

I'm not sure that motivation deserves praise.

 _Provide system feedback within 400ms in order to keep users’ attention and
increase productivity._

That's _horrible_ lag. Try 30ms. I get frustrated whenever the responsiveness
is slower than I can hit keyboard shortcuts or click. I even turn off Android
animations as they slow me down.

 _Touch targets should be large enough for users to both discern what it is
and to accurately select them... Touch targets should have ample spacing
between each other_

Sure thing hoss. But don't take it too far. The wasted screen real estate on
your site is abominable.

...I had to stop after the first few...

------
SilasX
Great compilation! But 12-14 don't seem to have direct relevance to to UX.
(Occam's Razor, 80/20 rule, and "work expands to fill available time".)

~~~
csours
Are you thinking of UI?

Some of these may be more pertinent while analyzing User Experience compared
to composing User Experience.

Occam's Razor: What is this control meant to do?

Pareto: does this UX cover at least 80% of the user's needs? Are there
critical cases in the remaining 20%?

Parkinson's Law is more of a bank shot, but think of it along with the Pareto
Principle: Organize the UX so that the user can accomplish the most important
tasks in the least time.

~~~
SilasX
> Are you thinking of UI?

No. I’m saying if you squint hard enough, then maybe you can think of how
these apply to UX, but they don’t _directly_ indicate some insight of UX, in
any way like the others do.

> Occam's Razor: What is this control meant to do?

If that’s how they mean to apply it, they should phrase it as “users make the
inference about the control that requires the fewest assumptions about how to
model the UI”. There’s a big difference between saying how users _actually_
act, vs how you as an engineer should infer, or what you should optimize for.

And yes, if the latter is meant, then it’s applicable on some level, it’s just
not specific to UX (just making inferences about data in general), and even
then didn't make clear how it would apply in a UX scenario.

>Pareto: does this UX cover at least 80% of the user's needs? Are there
critical cases in the remaining 20%?

That wouldn’t be the Pareto principle, that would be “check the 20% for if
you’re missing something critical.”

Again, a tangential application, if you stretch, just not direct like the
others.

>Parkinson's Law is more of a bank shot, but think of it along with the Pareto
Principle: Organize the UX so that the user can accomplish the most important
tasks in the least time.

That's orthogonal to Parkinson’s law, which says that time spent will bloat to
its bounds. What you’ve described is a different principle, something like
“minimize the time average spent to do tasks, thus giving more weight to the
more frequent ones”.

LATE EDIT: With that said, those three should definitely be part of any UX
engineer's mental toolkit ... but only in the sense that they should be part
of _any_ engineer's toolkit. The specific applicability to UX isn't obvious
the way the others are, at least.

~~~
csours
> "With that said, those three should definitely be part of any UX engineer's
> mental toolkit ... but only in the sense that they should be part of any
> engineer's toolkit. The specific applicability to UX isn't obvious the way
> the others are, at least."

I think that's fair. I will say that I appreciate this site, but I do think
the author had to stretch a bit to get to 20 rules. For instance, I would have
had a section just on the Gestalt Principles because they don't make much
sense by themselves.

------
ourmandave
_LAWS OF UX

Aesthetic Usability Effect 01 Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing
design as design that’s more usable.

Doherty Threshold 02 Productivity soars when a computer and its users interact
at a pace (<400ms) that ensures that neither has to wait on the other.

Fitts’s Law 03 The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to
and size of the target.

Hick’s Law 04 The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number
and complexity of choices.

Jakob’s Law 05 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.

Law of Common Region 06 Elements tend to be perceived into groups if they are
sharing an area with a clearly defined boundary.

Law of Prägnanz 07 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.

Law of Proximity 08 Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend to
be grouped together.

Law of Similarity 09 The human eye tends to perceive similar elements in a
design as a complete picture, shape, or group, even if those elements are
separated.

Law of Uniform Connectedness 10 Elements that are visually connected are
perceived as more related than elements with no connection.

Miller’s Law 11 The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in
their working memory.

Occam’s Razor 12 Among competing hypotheses that predict equally well, the one
with the fewest assumptions should be selected.

Pareto Principle 13 The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly
80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

Parkinson’s Law 14 Any task will inflate until all of the available time is
spent.

Peak-End Rule 15 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.

Postel’s Law 16 Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you
send.

Serial Position Effect 17 Users have a propensity to best remember the first
and last items in a series.

Tesler’s Law 18 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.

Von Restorff Effect 19 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.

Zeigarnik Effect 20 People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better
than completed tasks. _

~~~
isatty
Thank you so much.

Rule 21 should be: don’t make the user click 20 times.

~~~
slezyr
Or scroll 20 minutes to reach the bottom of the page.

~~~
m463
Maybe we all read the site name wrong.

------
mrob
Postel's Law ("Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you
send") is a bad idea. You should be conservative in both, which will result in
broken software, but broken software gets fixed. Postel's Law adds avoidable
complexity, and complexity is a major source of security vulnerabilities.
Unlike broken software, insecure software often stays insecure until it's
being actively exploited.

~~~
freehunter
As someone who has spent their entire career in infosec, one of my most
important rules is “security should break your company”. The alternative is,
someone else will break your company for you. If you can’t produce a document
that explains what this server does and every external interaction it could
possibly have, you’re failing. Be _extremely_ conservative in what you accept.

If you’re allowing basically anything in, eventually the wrong person with the
wrong code will get in. And that might very well be the last day you have a
business.

~~~
miguelmota
I agree that in general Postel's law is bad practice but I think that it also
makes sense under certain contexts. For example, if you have an email input
field, it's better to trim spaces from the user input before sending it to the
server instead of showing an error that there's spaces needing to be trimmed.
In this example the input field is liberal in what it accepts and conservative
in what it sends to the server.

~~~
noobermin
That might be the issue, what is "liberal" and "conservative" needs to be
quantified. Taking Postel's law or any law/adage to an extreme is a bad idea.

------
spaetzleesser
"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."

A lot of designers should write this down 100 times before they start working.
An extension should be

"users prefer your site to work the same way as it did yesterday since that's
what they already know."

~~~
FridgeSeal
_looks pointedly at Spotify_

Can we also have some rule about the maximum frequency of changes?
Alternatively can I go one further and suggest that for UI/UX changes, agile
style sprints are absolutely not the way they should be done? Rushing out
change after change in the UX won’t let you actually see what works and, and
let you iterate, it just disrupts users. These changes should be thoroughly
thought through, distilled, tested properly - not wildly deployed onto a
subset of users, and if necessary, grouped up and deployed altogether so that
there is only one UI change to adapt to, not 30.

~~~
spaetzleesser
"grouped up and deployed altogether so that there is only one UI change to
adapt to, not 30."

that's what I am disliking more and more about rapid releases. If there is a
big change once a year, I can take time to read the release notes and learn
what changed. But if there is a change once a month I can't keep up.

------
steinuil
> Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more
> usable.

Is that right? Personally I feel like the opposite is true; I'll take an ugly
looking but very usable UI over one that has all the bells and whistles but is
actually a nightmare to use. Surely when the UI is bad and the UX is also bad
the effect is compounded, and first time users might very well perceive the
combination of bad UI/good UX as much worse than good UI/bad UX, but I really
don't think this should be given out as good advice.

~~~
thiht
That's not what the "law" says at all.

If you have two websites with very similar UX, both very usable with the same
quirks, one beautiful and one ugly, users will be more forgiving towards the
beautiful one.

~~~
lordfoom
I think "UI>UX" is very clearly saying that user interface is more important
than user experience.

~~~
thiht
Where do you see "UI>UX"?

------
npunt
This site feels like the product of a graphic designer trying to formally
learn UX, and a classic case of theory & book smarts not translating to
practice.

------
dathinab
> Jakob’s Law

I have a problem with that law.

EDIT: TL;DR/Clarification: What matters is what users believe as "intuitive
and easily usable" which is _not_ implied by something being familiar nor by
what most other sites or apps do.

People don't want your site to work like other sites at all.

They want your site to work "intuitive and easily usable" for them.

As such they only want your site to behave like other sites if what they
perceive as "intuitive and easily usable" was coined bye such "other" sites.

But in reality what user perceive as "intuitive and easily usable" is often
largely coined bey the UX patterns around which they "learned" to use tech
initially.

Which means what is "intuitive and easily usable" is often displaced in time
and depending on your audience might MAJORLY differ from what most other sites
you can find today in the internet do!!

A good example is sourcehut (e.g. look at
`[https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/scdoc`](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/scdoc`)).

It's visually completely different from what most other github like sites do
and probably for some people it might look bad.

But for their target audience it's supper appealing as it appeals to what that
audience originally learned to be "intuitive and easily usable".

So I would strongly argue that Jakob’s Law is a harmful over simplification of
the actual effect which might be ok for some target audiences but literally
might brake your business if applied blindly.

~~~
Izkata
> (e.g. look at
> `[https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/scdoc`](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/scdoc`)).

HN doesn't have backticks syntax, so the trailing one is getting inculded as
part of the link and 404ing. Fixed link:
[https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/scdoc](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/scdoc)

~~~
dathinab
Thanks for the reminder, total leap of judgement in on my part. I really
shouldn't write comments after/just before midnight ;-).

------
TwoBit
Postel's Law is bad - "be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what
you send". It has a history of destroying technical standards. Remember how so
much HTML was broken on conforming browsers ten years ago? That's because
Microsoft wrote their browser to accept any broken crap you gave it, so that's
just what everybody did.

------
karaterobot
Many people in this thread are criticizing the website's design, as though to
criticize the content itself. In case it's not clear from the website: they
did not make any of these observations themselves, they just curated and
presented a list of observations other people made, usually decades ago. It
doesn't follow that any ineffective design or unclear wording on the
presenting website reflects on the validity of the source content.

A stronger criticism, at least in my opinion, is that presenting observations
about user behavior as "laws" is misleading, since humans aren't particles.
You can have laws in physical science, but not in design. If you thought of
these as laws rather than wise words to bear in mind, you'd be an ineffective
designer.

~~~
JamesSwift
To be fair to the critics, there is a difference between posting a blog post
about laws of UX and creating a site with a domain of 'lawsofux.com' dedicated
to the practice. In this case, I would assume that the site I am interacting
with is trying to adhere to its rules how it interprets them.

------
eagsalazar2
This is a great example of my own first law of UX: Almost everyone is terrible
at UX, including people who think they are experts at it.

------
deft
Rule 21: your text and content should be readable. The very low contrast
between the numbering and the grey background is distracting and looks like a
video game "make the second image barely visible" configuration.

------
627467
Only skimmed the content for now and can already appreciate the quality of the
thinking and how it is presented. Thank you.

I also love how the site looks and behaves exactly the same with or without
javascript (ublock origin user here) EXCEPT for the menu which relies on js.

I wonder if site creator can be persuaded to replace that js dependency with
the "checkbox hack"[0] at least for the basic navigation.

[0] [https://css-tricks.com/the-checkbox-hack/](https://css-tricks.com/the-
checkbox-hack/)

------
marcianx
Some (hopefully) constructive feedback based on my experience on this site:

\- At first, the site looked like a slideshow with prominent prev/next at the
top and a title content that takes the entirely of my desktop monitor. So,
naturally, I hit the keyboard right arrow (like most slideshow web pages) to
get to the next slide for content, and nothing happened.

\- Then at the bottom left, there's a down button. So I scrolled down to find
the content there. I read it, and still subconsciously hit keyboard right for
the next slide...oops, I mean, page...because of the prev/next at the top
(sure, pebkac and all that; but it's also expectations-setting).

\- Then I clicked on "next" to get another page that again takes the full
monitor for the title, requiring scrolling down to get to the content, all of
which can easily fit on a single screen. It seems unnecessarily "distracting",
in a sense, since the expectation is that the user would actually go through
the content and not just the titles which themselves are not very informative.

\- One way I tried to improve ergonomics was to hitting page-down to read the
content and then tab a couple times to get to the next button (almost
automatic). However...the focus indicator for the "next button" has been
removed in CSS, which is another usability nono.

Of at least tangential relevance here are Doherty Threshold (slide 2) and
Jakob's law (slide 5). Just my 2c.

------
kazinator
> _Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more
> usable._

Figures that would be rule number one. Everywhere you go there are pretty UI's
that are garbage, functionally.

Animation, transparent fading, no distracting scroll-bars or borders, wrapped
around a 1-2-3 menu selection.

> _Productivity soars when a computer and its users interact at a pace (
> <400ms) that ensures that neither has to wait on the other._

That is just nonsense. Productivity soars the faster the computer is. Ideally,
the user should never waits for the computer; everything should be instant.

Whether the user waits for the computer is neither here nor there.

The ultimate computer-does-not-wait-for-the-user is to have the users prepare
job specifications entirely outside of the computer and then submit them to a
clerk at a job window. The computer never waits for a user because the job
queue is busy from numerous users. It is not very good UI.

In an actual interactive UI, a needless delay could be caused by, for
instance, collecting the necessary parameters for an operation through a
cascade of multiple dialogs instead of batching them together. Though the
computer waits more, too, that's irrelevant; the user's time is what was
wasted.

I'm amazed anyone pretending to be a UI person would even feign being
interested in how much time the machine spends waiting for the user.

~~~
wtracy
The 400 ms threshold cited for the Doherty threshold is from a 1982 research
paper. I imagine that in 1982, 400 ms response times felt pretty darn good.

Also, the nature of the tasks that users performed in 1982 may have meant that
there was no benefit to <400ms response times. (If it takes twenty seconds to
read and understand the output, and another ten to key in your next command,
then a 400 ms delay is not a meaningful productivity drag.)

Today, I would guess that the threshold is closer to 50 ms.

(Also, "time spent by the computer waiting for the user" makes sense in the
context of a 1982 research paper. That has changed in the last 28 years, to
say the least.)

All of this is a long way off saying that if you are making UX decisions based
on 28 year old research, you are on shaky ground!

~~~
kazinator
1982 was 38 years ago, not 28.

The microcomputers I used in 1982 had instantaneous response time.

Most of the software was developed by assembly language die-hards.

400 ms is more acceptable if there is no jitter in it, in comparison to
unpredictable response time.

------
neop1x
This is what I would like to suggest:

1\. make it respond fast to input (it is super annoying that some textboxes
are not pure native textboxes anymore and have deep javascript logic behind
that sometimes I see characters popping up slowly as I type!)

2\. avoid low contrast between text and background (it's hard to read your
light gray text on white background)

3\. make it clear what a button is and what a label is (a blue label being a
button on iOS)

4\. avoid wasting screen space, stop making fonts huge unnecessarily (if you
wasted half the screen size by couple of words or there are big empty spaces
where is your content really, what are bigger screens good for then)

5\. stop designing desktop UIs like it was a smarphone (scrollbar should
really be big enough to move by mouse and handle should have contrast to the
slider; I am not touching my desktop screen or scrolling by swiping and
hopefully never be)

6\. for text content (descriptions, articles, comments, etc) stop preventing
right click, copying text or messing up with clipboard (like appending some
garbage at the end of copied text)

7\. stop inventing original design widgets no one asked for and it is not
immediately obvious how they work and easy to use / just an additional option
(I have seen many toggles where it was unclear whether they are in On or Off
state; or widgets lost ability to be controlled by the keyboard; or date
fields which I could fill in in 2 seconds by keyboard but they forced me to
spend minutes by selecting year first, listing months, finding the day in some
unnecessary calendar popups)

Thank you.

------
scraft
This is how it looks for me in the Materialistic Hackernews app

[https://ibb.co/ZJr2MXG](https://ibb.co/ZJr2MXG)

Certainly some fine UI laws in action.

~~~
mimsee
maybe update android webview?

------
wgx
<ad> Shameless plug: If you want 81 more:
[https://uxbook.io](https://uxbook.io) </ad>

~~~
50
Added to cart! But in similar vein, do you know if UX writing is a viable
career? If so, how would one get into it? What should be on one's portfolio?

~~~
wgx
I think writing in tech for a publisher is probably not a viable career. I’m a
full time UX person, and the book was a side-gig. If it had been my only
income for the last couple of years; I’d be broke. It’s a great exercise for
any expert in their field, but it’s hard to make a living writing. In my
experience, YMMV.

------
crawsome
I'm not cruising for irony here, but trying to use this site is a huge pain.

------
Animats
This is on user interfaces _for sites that are selling something._ It's not
for user interfaces that are for _doing_ something.

~~~
csours
My basic definition of UX is providing users data and decisions in a certain
context.

In some contexts (selling), certain things are more important, like having a
beautiful appearance and no data overload. Your first time user may be your
most common user, because they may only make one purchase per [lifetime, year,
etc]

In other contexts, for instance industrial controls, data density is more
important, and the user may be expected to take more time to learn the
interface. There is still some need to accommodate new users, because everyone
is a new user at some point.

In any case, there is a decision to be made, aided by some data presentation.

------
noobermin
I think the first law gives ux people too much of a license. Who decides what
is "aesthetic?" When it's designers to begin with they can use to justify all
sorts of pretty but user-unfriendly designs. One of the best examples in my
mind was that spate of poor contrast color schemes from the mid 2010s that was
fairly common and still persists on some sites.

------
pilif
To be snarky: A page titled "Laws of UX" probably shouldn't have black text on
a dark grey background (the law numbers)

------
ivan_gammel
#13, the Pareto Principle, is the main source of digital inequality nowadays.
Lots of modern UIs do not perform well in terms of accessibility, because
backlog is never prioritized for minority groups of users. The art of
inclusive communications will never exist if we continue applying this as a
law, instead of focusing on reducing the costs of accessibility.

~~~
realtalk_sp
Accessibility is the sort of thing that has to be regulated into existence
because the economic cost-benefit often cannot be justified. Similar to
handicap parking, ramps, etc.

------
enriquto
Cannot take this article seriously. The best UX for this content is clearly a
single page of text with 20 sections.

~~~
nwallin
This is, without a doubt, one of the worst UXs I've ever used.

This cobbler's children have no shoes. Not because he doesn't care about his
children, or can't be bothered after a long day. No; this cobbler simply
doesn't know how to make shoes.

edit: is the site satire? Poe's law is strong with this one.

------
layoutIfNeeded
Can’t really trust UX advice from a site with such annoying UX.

------
eurasiantiger
I don't buy the first one about apparent usability.

The claim that better aesthetics are perceived as better usability is based on
a 1995 study by Kurosu and Kashimura. The study was done on 156 students of a
Japanese design school and 96 students of a Japanese university psychology
course.

That's already an over 160% sample bias towards very likely extremely
aesthetically-minded people, not to mention that the Japanese have an ancient
culture of aesthetics
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aesthetics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aesthetics))
which in itself renders the study and its conclusions culturally irrelevant to
global audiences.

------
anonytrary
I find it ironic that the number heading contrast with the background is
almost non-existent.

------
Andrew_nenakhov
UX of this website is horrible. It is rather stylish but makes it incredibly
hard to understand what the author wanted to say. This [1] commenter here did
a better job in simple plaintext.

Thus, for the breach of the Laws ot UX, by the authority granted to me by
myself, I sentence the author of the website to 2 months of studying GNOME
HIG. [2]

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24034941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24034941)

[2]:
[https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/](https://developer.gnome.org/hig/stable/)

------
alvarlagerlof
This is exactly like those UX Instagram accounts that for example say "make
sure to have a high enough text contrast" then procedes to completely brake
that rule in the next post.

------
jeremydw
Noticed that keyboard navigation (tabbing, focus order, focus rings, etc.)
didn't work on this site. Maybe I'm being pedantic but a baseline for good UX
should be accessibility.

------
fold_left
Some of you might also be interested in The Laws Of Simplicity by John Maeda

[http://lawsofsimplicity.com/](http://lawsofsimplicity.com/)

------
1MachineElf
People here have a lot of nit-picks about the design of this site. Throwing
mine in: I dislike that it's logo is a triangle containing a circle and a
square. Reminds me too much of a Witch House album cover, or some other "dark"
aesthetic appropriating that look. Kind of hard to put into words, but that
symbol carries a smugness that seems just a little more pronounced outside of
a 2020 goth context. I'm not trying to be persuasive, just honest.

------
Jaruzel
When I was first getting in web design (mainly for fun, but also a bit of
profit), I read 'Don't Make Me Think'[1] it really helped me understand the
difference between good and bad web usability design.

\---

[1] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Make-Think-Revisited-
Usability...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Make-Think-Revisited-
Usability/dp/0321965515/)

(Non-affiliate link. I'm just recommending a book I found helpful...)

------
flr03
After reading all the comments of the UX experts here I almost feel that I
need to apologise to have enjoyed this list of nice cards over a list of
bullet points.

------
seesawtron
Discussion from 2018:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16185118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16185118)

------
rawoke083600
Side Note: I'm not an UX Expert and won't comment, my sites usually looks like
Xmass trees !

What IS interesting is how many times this
site([https://lawsofux.com/](https://lawsofux.com/)) has been submitted and
not received ANY comments and now about the 10th time it got submitted, it has
226 comments :) ? lol HackerNews can be so weird at times.

------
taphangum
This is great. But IMO, the real fundamental aspect of UX, from which all
others emerge, is the law of having a great information architecture.

I wrote more about this here: [https://simpleprogrammer.com/information-
architecture-develo...](https://simpleprogrammer.com/information-architecture-
developers-learning-design/).

~~~
jhardy54
> Want To Earn More... And Receive Extra Recognition? Take this self assement
> and see how you can boost your software development career today! Yes, Show
> Me How!

I wanted to read your thoughts but your pop-up modal prevented me from reading
your article and also decreased the probability that I'll ever visit your
website again.

~~~
taphangum
It's not actually my site. I just guest posted there. But try refreshing and
see if it helps.

------
buddyp450
For a UX page about the laws of UX I'm very happy I am a law breaker. This
site is terrible for communicating it's point.

------
test7777
oh my fridging gawd, i am so triggered by this. the site linked to is supposed
to advertise a book on ux with some example content and yet literally every
comment here is suggesting a way to improve on the UX of that with some even
just downright reformatting the content as a comment.

i hope they don't sell a single book as this serves as an example of how to
not do UX.

------
yoz-y
Oh. The last time this came around I remember writing a digest because the
site was hard to read. [https://yozy.net/2018/01/10-laws-of-ux-
digested/](https://yozy.net/2018/01/10-laws-of-ux-digested/)

It seems that it got updated with double the rules since then.

------
SPBS
No one mentioning that the site being SPA makes it laggy? If this were a
static webpage - and it should - the scrolling would be 100% responsive.
Instead on my 2015 macbook the animation stutters when loading the page in and
scrolling down too fast incurs a delay while the content loads.

------
mleonhard
It's missing a warning about modes. That is a serious omission.

If you want to learn about UX, Nielsen Norman Group's website is a good place
to start:

[https://www.nngroup.com](https://www.nngroup.com)

------
ryeguy_24
> "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."

While likely accurate, this thinking is likely not conducive to UX innovation.

------
kabacha
It's missing by far the most important law: if the user uses the program the
same way after a year of usage it's a failed program - in other words good
program design needs to allow the user to grow.

------
enjeyw
I've got serious doubts about a list of 'UX laws' that doesn't include any
references to affordances (or anything else from 'The Design of Everyday
Things').

Also, this site is impossible to read?

------
JGM_io
Am I the only one that thinks these are UI rules and not specifically UX?

------
rrdharan
Previously discussed in 2018:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16185118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16185118)

------
mxmilkb
[https://i.imgur.com/g1QERdk.png](https://i.imgur.com/g1QERdk.png) I guess the
Materialistic app does need some TLC though

------
llaolleh
I need to do an analysis of all of these with Microsoft Teams. That piece of
software breaks so many fundamental UX laws. One of the worst culprits I've
ever seen.

------
1f60c
Because of the logo (and general quality of the site), I thought this was
affiliated with Google and the Material project, but it doesn't appear to be.

------
csours
How does your organization approach UX? Do you feel like it is taken
seriously?

To me UX is modern day industrial design - both for internal tools and for
products.

------
miguelmota
Love the color schemes and animations. Nicely done.

Some feedback:

\- Make clicking the browser back button resume in the same position user was
instead of taking them back to the top of the page.

\- Move the 'Serial Position Effect' item to be the last item in the list for
greater effect.

\- Link directly to the PDF for the posters instead of the dropbox folder.
Also having a separate page for all the downloads would be nice.

\- Speed up the animations on the linked pages since they're a bit slow.

\- Doing the shape animations as the user scrolls down the page could be
interesting instead of the static images.

------
nyanmatt
Wallpaper versions:

[https://t.co/Hj9MLMaDVM?amp=1](https://t.co/Hj9MLMaDVM?amp=1)

------
rapnie
Rule no. 0: People will always complain about your UX choices /s

Seriously. What are your most appealing UX designs these days?

------
mmhsieh
Law 21: You can never please everyone.

------
XCSme
Law 21: Check text contrast on your page. Black text on dark gray background
is hard to read.

------
indiantinker
Stop doing this to design. Please!

------
LoSboccacc
weird that a 20 UX rule website is so hostile to navigate on mobile.

for each role you click to get in then swipe all the way past the fold to get
to the sentence of interest then swipe all the way past the footer (!) to get
to the next rule

------
d_burfoot
"The useability flaws of an application are invisible to its designer."

------
hizxy
Everyone has a different definition of UX. That makes the term meaningless.

------
stblack
Plaintext:

LAWS OF UX

01\. Aesthetic Usability Effect: Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing
design as design that’s more usable.

02\. 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.

03\. Fitts’s Law: The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance
to and size of the target.

04\. Hick’s Law: The time it takes to make a decision increases with the
number and complexity of choices.

05\. 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.

06\. Law of Common Region: Elements tend to be perceived into groups if they
are sharing an area with a clearly defined boundary.

07\. 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 of us.

08\. Law of Proximity: Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend
to be grouped together.

09\. 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.

10\. Law of Uniform Connectedness: Elements that are visually connected are
perceived as more related than elements with no connection.

11\. Miller’s Law: The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items
in their working memory.

12\. Occam’s Razor: Among competing hypotheses that predict equally well, the
one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.

13\. Pareto Principle: The Pareto principle states that, for many events,
roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

14\. Parkinson’s Law: Any task will inflate until all of the available time is
spent.

15\. 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.

16\. Postel’s Law: Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you
send.

17\. Serial Position Effect: Users have a propensity to best remember the
first and last items in a series.

18\. Tesler’s Law: 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.

19\. Von Restorff Effect: 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.

20\. Zeigarnik Effect: People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better
than completed tasks.

~~~
markdown
Edited to take into account the laws of UX:

LAWS OF UX

01\. Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more
usable.

02\. Productivity soars when a computer and its users interact at a pace
(<400ms) that ensures that neither has to wait on the other.

03\. The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of
the target.

04\. The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and
complexity of choices.

05\. 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.

06\. Elements tend to be perceived into groups if they are sharing an area
with a clearly defined boundary.

07\. 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.

08\. Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend to be grouped
together.

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

10\. Elements that are visually connected are perceived as more related than
elements with no connection.

11\. The average person can only keep 7 items in their working memory.

12\. Among competing hypotheses that predict equally well, the one with the
fewest assumptions should be selected.

13\. For many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

14\. Any task will inflate until all of the available time is spent.

15\. 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.

16\. Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.

17\. Users have a propensity to best remember the first and last items in a
series.

18\. For any system there is a certain amount of complexity which cannot be
reduced.

19\. When multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the
rest is most likely to be remembered.

20\. People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed
tasks.

------
punnerud
Copy-paste highlight from every page, for easier read:

1\. Aesthetic Usability Effect - Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing
design as design that’s more usable

2\. 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

3\. Fitts’s Law - The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance
to and size of the target

4\. Hick’s Law - The time it takes to make a decision increases with the
number and complexity of choices

5\. 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

6\. Law of Common Region - Elements tend to be perceived into groups if they
are sharing an area with a clearly defined boundary

7\. 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 of us

8\. Law of Proximity - Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend
to be grouped together

9\. 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

10\. Law of Uniform Connectedness - Elements that are visually connected are
perceived as more related than elements with no connection

11\. Miller’s Law - The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items
in their working memory

12\. Occam’s Razor - Among competing hypotheses that predict equally well, the
one with the fewest assumptions should be selected

13\. Pareto Principle - The Pareto principle states that, for many events,
roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes

14\. Parkinson’s Law - Any task will inflate until all of the available time
is spent

15\. 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

16\. Postel’s Law - Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what
you send

17\. Serial Position Effect - Users have a propensity to best remember the
first and last items in a series

18\. Tesler’s Law - 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

19\. Von Restorff Effect - 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

20\. Zeigarnik Effect - People remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks
better than completed task

~~~
eplanit
Thank you! I was thinking that the site should offer a simple list as an
option.

Ironically, in the strict (and best) sense of the notion "user interface"
(i.e. being an effective, efficient, easy conveyance of information to/from
computer and user), yours is better than the fancy site.

------
ratsimihah
Can you disable horizontal scrolling on the menu on mobile please

------
projektfu
What do the shapes mean?

~~~
jmole
the shapes are the raison d'etre for the article.

"How many UX concepts can I attempt to illustrate with basic shapes and
shading?"

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'll hazard a guess: the site is a portfolio piece, meant to show off both the
author's ability to make artistic design, and their familiarity with some
theory behind UX.

If it were meant to convey information first, it would have looked like this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24031163](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24031163).

------
clashmeifyoucan
ironic that the first block talks about aesthetics but the text literally does
not meet the acceptable contrast ratio. I do like the rest of it, though.

------
kgraves
Rule number 21: Site should still work with JS disabled.

------
quickthrower2
Another "expertsexchange" style domain name!

------
quickthrower2
Jakobs law: Yellow on white is impossible to read.

------
mayoff
You have twenty things to say, and your site only shows one thing per screen
regardless of the size of my window. Apparently you think a PowerPoint deck is
the pinnacle of UX?

------
kipply
nice compilation!

is anyone else bothered that they have to scroll below the fold after clicking
"learn more" to get to the content?

------
rxsel
The law says “make all applications and programs accessible, aesthetic,
intuitive, and user friendly” but I think I see alotta engineers out here.

------
colapro
Interesting how the law count here seems to have ballooned to double of what
it was a few years ago when this link was on the front page before.

------
markdog12
Doherty didn't go far enough.

------
aswanson
I love the design on this site.

------
je42
it took me a while to find the arrow get to the explanation....

------
joshu
What about Cole’s Law?

------
willpegan
Great

------
staycoolboy
That's a lot of named laws!

------
twirlock
It's a pretty site, don't get me wrong, but which law suggests presenting
lists of obscurely named concepts as fullscreen shape art where I have to
click one by one to read the list?

