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Laws of UX

lawsofux.com

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Re: Laws of UX

#181

Post by oblio »

reitanqild wrote: post #132
oblio wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

That's only because you were interested in IT, either as a career or as a hobby. Most people aren't.

Re: Laws of UX

#182

Post by HenryBemis »

yoz-y wrote: post #76

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/ A kind of an opinionated tl;dr

Great digest, thank you! Respecting the original poster (and his/her previous not-so-fruitful-reposts the previous days), I like your wording more and I suggest anyone that finds this topic interesting to have a read to your digest.

Re: Laws of UX

#183

Post by Jugurtha »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #140
reaperducer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

331K transferred. Less than 1K of actual readable text. In the about section, the author brags about using Sketch, Gulp, SASS, Nunjucks, and a third-party font. Seriously? He couldn't have just envisioned that thing in his head and put it straight to code?

It's actually 1.3kB of text. Here's the entire contents of the page, for anyone else who can't read the original. Clicking on each entry brings you to a page with the same text and a Wikipedia quote on the origins of the law and a couple sources for further reading: 1. Fitts's Law: The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target. 2. Hick's Law: The time it takes to make a decision…

Law/Effect:

1. Fitts: The distance to and size of a target dictate the time to acquire it.

2. Hick: The number and complexity of choices increase the time to make a decision.

3. Jakob: Users prefer your site to work similarly to sites they know.

4. Prägnanz: People exert the least cognitive effort to interpret complex images.

5. Proximity: Proximate objects are grouped.

6. Miller: The average person can only keep 7 +/- 2 items in their working memory.

7. Parkinson: A task's duration matches its allocated time.

8. Serial Position: Users best remember the first and last items in a series.

9. Tesler (aka "Conservation of Complexity"): A system has irreducible complexity.

10. Von Restorff (aka "Isolation"): What stands out is remembered best.

Re: Laws of UX

#184

Post by uses »

"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.

Re: Laws of UX

#185

Post by airstrike »

yoz-y wrote: post #76

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/ A kind of an opinionated tl;dr

Do put leading zeros on numbers that are sorted as text.

Re: Laws of UX

#186

Post by Kalium »

mikewhy wrote: post #109
Kalium wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the author is being derided for being inefficient to the tune of 33000% or so. It's like buying 300-some-odd napkins and a similar number of pens so you can scribble a phone number on one.

I'm not so sure, unless it's a total misunderstanding from the person chiding them. Sketch doesn't add to final size. Neither does Gulp. Sass and Nunjucks might, but it's a website. They tend to need HTML and CSS.

You're absolutely right! Sketch and Gulp don't add to the final size. And HTML and CSS are needed.

So let's be generous! I'll assume that 4x the core content size (1.3k) is needed for markup and presentation, for a total of 6.5k. Round a bit... that's still 5100% inefficient.

I can see why some might consider that a bit inefficient. Of course, I can also see why some might consider the design the most important part of the site.

Re: Laws of UX

#187

Post by SerLava »

woliveirajr wrote: post #126
SerLava wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm confident that web design is the way it is mostly as a means to keep the people that work with it employed. I work with web designers and can corroborate that. Most of the time, their product is sold, negotiated and approved before anyone has actually used it. An unusable mess can be a "successful" project, while a usable product can be completely kiboshed and not even paid for or used. This pushes the emphasis…

IMO, the problem is that the ones that approve the look-and-feel aren't exactly the users, but the hirers. And since they already live inside the company, some things might make sense to them, and not the wider public.

Yeah precisely. The CEO can connect the dots, so they don't stop to think if a customer could connect the dots, or if anyone would bother to think that hard (about their cryptic site, which is 7th website of 10, in a row of browser tabs).

Re: Laws of UX

#188

Post by SerLava »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #128
SerLava wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm confident that web design is the way it is mostly as a means to keep the people that work with it employed. I work with web designers and can corroborate that. Most of the time, their product is sold, negotiated and approved before anyone has actually used it. An unusable mess can be a "successful" project, while a usable product can be completely kiboshed and not even paid for or used. This pushes the emphasis…

It doesn’t help that the designers often do not code and model the experiences in animation software. I am currently working on a redesign and just saw the agency’s suggestions for animation. Seem to be highly influenced by iOS apps’ transitions and motion. But this is a website, for browsers, to be displayed on a variety of screen sizes, on a variety of browser versions. And the users of my website use mostly other…

>So the agency will present this to high management, in an ideal layout, designed in animation software, moving perfectly smoothly and solving for only one case without a clue on how to approach corner cases.

Oh lord, I don't really have to deal with complex animations on websites. Even though I wouldn't be the one physically building it, I don't look forward to the day. That sounds like a 2d problem becoming 3d.

Re: Laws of UX

#189

Post by Stratoscope »

longerthoughts wrote: post #120
culot wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even on the desktop site it hides the navigation. It could use an index on the left -- not to mention that the entire law page is so brief that it does not need its own page. Which one of those laws tackle UX bloat and ornament for ornaments sake? The site is pretty, that's true, but it's not made to be a useful source of information, it's made to be pretty above all else. The entire site is a great example of what t…

The irony is that they're perfectly demonstrating the importance of Jakob's law (03): "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."

And most other sites have dark text on a light background, not light text on a dark background.
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