🧠📐 Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products & Services
📝🐒 Human Notes
- Users spend most of their time on other sites. Leverage common design patterns.
- Make targets big, sufficient spaced, and easy to reach.
- Minimize choices to ease decisions.
- Working memory = 5-9
📚 A Foundational Guide to Human-Centered Design
👩💻 Jon Yablonski’s Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products & Services serves as an essential resource for designers and creators, translating complex psychological principles into practical, actionable guidelines for user experience (UX) design. 🧠 The book’s core premise is that the most effective and intuitive designs are those that align with the inherent psychological tendencies of users. 💡 By understanding these fundamental “laws,” designers can create products that feel more natural, engaging, and ultimately more successful.
⚙️ Core Concepts and Key Takeaways
✅ The book is structured around a collection of key psychological principles, each presented as a “law” of UX. 🗺️ These laws provide a framework for making informed design decisions, moving beyond subjective preferences to a more objective, evidence-based approach.
- 🌉 Bridging Psychology and Design: 🤝 The book’s primary strength lies in its ability to connect established psychological heuristics to tangible UX design practices. 🧠 It explains how understanding human perception and cognition can lead to more intuitive and user-friendly interfaces.
- 🏛️ Emphasis on Established Patterns: 🔄 A recurring theme is the importance of leveraging existing mental models. ➡️ Jakob’s Law, for instance, posits that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know. 🧑💻 This encourages designers to adhere to established conventions to reduce the cognitive load on users.
- ⚡ Efficiency and Clarity in Interaction: 🎯 Principles like Fitts’s Law (the time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target) and ⏳ Hick’s Law (the time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices) provide clear guidance on creating efficient and easy-to-navigate interfaces.
- 🧠 Managing Cognitive Load: ℹ️ The book delves into how to present information in a way that respects the user’s cognitive limits. 🔢 Miller’s Law, which suggests that the average person can only keep about seven items in their working memory, is a classic example of this.
- 🎨 The Power of Aesthetics: ✨ Yablonski highlights the Aesthetic-Usability Effect, where users often perceive aesthetically pleasing designs as more usable. 🖼️ This underscores the importance of visual design in creating a positive user experience.
- ⚖️ Ethical Considerations: ❗ The book also touches on the ethical implications of using psychology in design, reminding designers of their responsibility to create experiences that are not manipulative.
🎯 Target Audience and Impact
👍 Laws of UX is highly accessible, making it suitable for a broad audience, from beginner UX designers seeking a foundational understanding to experienced professionals looking for a refresher on core principles. 🧑💼 Its practical approach, complete with real-world examples from familiar applications, makes the concepts easy to grasp and apply. 🌐 The book, which originated from a popular website, has been praised for its concise and visually engaging presentation of complex ideas. 🚀 A second edition has since been released, updating examples and further deepening the connection to underlying psychological concepts.
📚 Book Recommendations
🧠 Similar Reads: Deepening Your UX Psychology Toolkit
- 💺🚪💡🤔 The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman: 📚 A foundational text that explores the psychology of everyday objects and how to design them with the user in mind.
- 🚫💭🌐 Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug: 💡 A practical and witty guide to web usability that emphasizes clarity and simplicity in design.
- 💯 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan Weinschenk: 👀 This book delves into the psychology of how people see, read, remember, think, focus, and are motivated, providing designers with actionable insights.
- 🧠 Designing with the Mind in Mind by Jeff Johnson: 💻 Explores cognitive and perceptual psychology and applies it to the design of interactive systems.
- 👩💻 Psychology for Designers by Joe Leech: 🧑🏫 A practical guide that teaches designers how to find and apply psychological principles to their work.
🧭 Contrasting Perspectives: Broadening Your Design Horizon
- 🤸 Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden: 💨 Focuses on a more agile and collaborative approach to UX design, emphasizing rapid experimentation and validation over extensive upfront research.
- 🎨 Refactoring UI by Adam Wathan and Steve Schoger: 👁️ A highly tactical guide focused on the visual aspects of UI design, offering practical tips for creating professional-looking interfaces without a formal design background.
- 🌍 Change by Design by Tim Brown: 🚀 This book champions “design thinking” as a problem-solving approach that can be applied not just to products, but to organizations and systems as well.
- ⏱️ Sprint by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz: ✅ Outlines a five-day process for solving big problems and testing new ideas, offering a structured alternative to traditional design cycles.
💡 Creatively Related: Exploring the Human Mind and Behavior
- 🤔🐇🐢 Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: 🚀 A groundbreaking exploration of the two systems that drive the way we think, offering profound insights into human judgment and decision-making.
- 🔗 Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal: 🎣 Examines the psychology behind what makes some products so engaging and how to apply those principles to create products people love.
- 👉🤏 Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein: ➡️ This book introduces the concept of “choice architecture” and how subtle “nudges” can influence behavior in positive ways.
- 🔮🤷🏼♀️🤪 Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely: ❓ Uncovers the hidden forces that shape our decisions, revealing the consistent and often surprising patterns of human irrationality.
- 🔄🧠💪 The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg: 🔄 Explores the science of habit formation in our lives, companies, and societies.
- 🌊🧘🏼♀️🧠📈 Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: 🧘 Investigates the state of “flow,” a state of deep immersion and engagement, and how to design experiences that foster it.
💬 Gemini Prompt (gemini-2.5-pro)
Write a markdown-formatted (start headings at level H2) book report, followed by a plethora of additional similar, contrasting, and creatively related book recommendations on Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products & Services. Never put book titles in quotes or italics. Be thorough in content discussed but concise and economical with your language. Structure the report with section headings and bulleted lists to avoid long blocks of text.