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Laws of UX

lawsofux.com

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Re: Laws of UX

#51

Post by gkya »

alxlaz wrote: post #39
gkya wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really know Fitts' work, but I do understand that what that sentence means is obviously "smaller things are harder to click or tap". But that is very obvious and thus meaningless without indicating what that implies: e.g. "make bigger buttons".

OK, first, that sentence does not mean "smaller things are harder to click or tap". That sentence would still hold true if smaller things were easier to click or tap. Besides, in 1954, when Fitts' paper appeared, it was already understood that this was the case. I'm not being overly pedantic here -- Archimedes' principle is not that "whether an object sinks or floats depends on what it's made of", that had been known…

I'm not really interested in these details, and "make bigger buttons" was just an example of what an implication might have been (as indicated by "e.g."). What I tried to criticise was the vagueness of the linked page and the scarcity of information.

Re: Laws of UX

#52

Post by alxlaz »

gkya wrote: post #51
alxlaz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, first, that sentence does not mean "smaller things are harder to click or tap". That sentence would still hold true if smaller things were easier to click or tap. Besides, in 1954, when Fitts' paper appeared, it was already understood that this was the case. I'm not being overly pedantic here -- Archimedes' principle is not that "whether an object sinks or floats depends on what it's made of", that had been known…

I'm not really interested in these details, and "make bigger buttons" was just an example of what an implication might have been (as indicated by "e.g."). What I tried to criticise was the vagueness of the linked page and the scarcity of information.

> What I tried to criticise was the vagueness of the linked page and the scarcity of information.

So if you are not interested in "these details", but you found the page vague and the information scarce, what details should it have included so as not to be vague?

Re: Laws of UX

#53

Post by k_ »

dhimes wrote: post #36

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

Plus the associated illustration (on Laws of UX) seems to agree with you.

Re: Laws of UX

#54

Post by rovek »

iapx88 wrote: post #17
rovek wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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.

That sounds like the vast majority of users expect more functionality from browsers than can be achieved without javascript. Do you think they would be willing to part with that functionality to achieve engineering perfection?

Re: Laws of UX

#55

Post by asdjasldkjkljd »

dozzie wrote: post #14

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

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.

Re: Laws of UX

#56

Post by zzzcpan »

gkya wrote: post #7

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…

> This is SOOO WRONG.

Even if the author is not a UX person himself and doesn't understand those things well enough to give better explanations, this is still not wrong. Users spend most of the time not on your website, but on other websites. This is important, because it means that other websites shape what users know and understand about websites' UIs, not your website and that users are not willing to spend time learning your website's UI. So you have to learn how other websites do it and apply the same concepts in order to make it easy for people to use your website.

Re: Laws of UX

#57

Post by brndnmtthws »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #44

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…

On desktop it's awful too. I scrolled for about 5 seconds and decided it wasn't readable.

Re: Laws of UX

#58

Post by gkya »

alxlaz wrote: post #52
gkya wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really interested in these details, and "make bigger buttons" was just an example of what an implication might have been (as indicated by "e.g."). What I tried to criticise was the vagueness of the linked page and the scarcity of information.

> What I tried to criticise was the vagueness of the linked page and the scarcity of information. So if you are not interested in "these details", but you found the page vague and the information scarce, what details should it have included so as not to be vague?

> what details should it have included so as not to be vague?

- How is the correctness of such "law", expecially in context of UX desgin, is observed?

- What are practical implications of these "laws", again in the context of UX design.

Re: Laws of UX

#59

Post by rsoto »

_m8fo wrote: post #42

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/ 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 temp…

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.

Re: Laws of UX

#60

Post by seanmcdirmid »

wingerlang wrote: post #11
gkya wrote: post #7

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…

> The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target. If you need to move the cursor far and to a small target, it will take a long time to hone in on it. The shorter you have to move it, and the larger the target - the easier it is to click. For example the menu on macOS is always at the top of the screen, making its target HUGE and is therefore basically O(1) to hit.

For touch that is true, for mouse and pen you still have to consider travel time.
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