UX Terms Flashcards
What is Jakob’s Law?
Users will transfer expectations they have built around one familiar product to another that appears similar. Put another way, because users spend most of their time on other sites, they want your site to look and feel similar to experiences they’re already familiar with.
What Law do the use of Personas help with?
Jakob’s Law. User Personas help to frame design decisions based on real needs and expectations, not generic needs of undefined “users”.
What is Fitts’ Law?
The time it takes to acquire a target is a function of distance and size. Put another way, touch targets should be large enough to accurately select, and should be far enough from each other that accidentally selection doesn’t occur.
What is Hick’s Law?
The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices available. Put another way, to increase decision making and decrease cognitive load, break complex tasks into smaller steps.
According to Hick’s Law, what is cognitive load?
The amount of mental resources needed to understand and interact with an interface. The human brain can only juggle between 3-5 items in memory at any give moment.
What Law does Card Sorting help with?
Hick’s Law. This research method puts the onus of information architecture sorting on the user, allowing things to be organized to match the mental models of the intended persona.
Why does Oversimplification hurt the user experience?
Oversimplification can create a point of abstraction that makes it difficult for the user to understand what the next step or intended action is. For example, icons may create the perception of simplicity, but without proper context, the user loses what the intent is.
What is Miller’s Law?
Users can only store 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working or active memory at any given moment.
Based on Miller’s Law, should navigation items be limited to 7?
No. Because navigation items are generally available at all times, users rarely, if ever, need to memorize and store the information. That said, it is generally good practice to keep the number of navigation items as limited as absolutely needed (See Hick’s Law).
What Law does Chunking help with?
Miller’s Law. Chunking groups like items together in visually distinctive hierarchical arrangements in order to reduce cognitive load and help users retain information more easily.
What is Postel’s Law?
Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others. In other words, create systems that are comprehensible and reliable (device types, screen sizes feature, support, assistive technologies, etc.), while also making sure input can be collected from users in a variety of ways.
How does Postel’s Law apply to something like form inputs?
It asks designers to be conservative in what and how much information we ask the user to give (only provide what is necessary to avoid cognitive decision fatigue), and consider the different formats and device types the form can be accessed from. For example, a user may not need to fill out a username and password if that information can be accessed via Face ID.
What is the Peak-End Rule?
It suggests that users will form a positive or negative opinion of an experience based on how they felt at the peak and end, rather than the sum or average of the total experience.
What Law/Rule does Journey Mapping help with?
Peak-End Rule. Journey Mapping helps to visualize the intended path a user persona takes throughout the experience, creating a narrative to chart both the positive and negative along the way. It illustrates instances for opportunity.
What is the Aesthetic-Usability Effect?
Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that is more usable.
