Laws of UX catalogs ~30 cognitive and psychological principles covering memory, perception, and motor interaction that designers use when building interfaces.
Key Takeaways
Spans ~30 named principles: Gestalt laws (Proximity, Similarity, Common Region), memory laws (Miller’s, Serial Position Effect), and motor laws (Fitts’s Law).
Hick’s Law and Choice Overload both state that more options increase decision time, directly impacting navigation menus, forms, and onboarding flows.
Doherty Threshold sets <400ms as the response latency at which productivity peaks; slower interactions break flow and engagement.
Peak-End Rule and Zeigarnik Effect shift design priority to emotional peaks and endings, not average session quality across the whole interaction.
Tesler’s Law (Conservation of Complexity) warns that complexity removed from the UI always resurfaces in backend logic, support burden, or user error.
Hacker News Comment Review
One commenter argues these laws disproportionately reflect Nielsen Norman Group research and a narrow observer set, raising concern that HCI theory is being constrained by patterns from a limited population.
Notable Comments
@nye2k: “held back day by day due to a set of gentle rules” – critiques NNGroup dominance and questions whether Jakob’s Law and related principles encode design convention rather than universal human behavior.
