80/20 rule — how the Pareto Principle is helping designers in 2020?
In the world of abundance, how do you decide what to prioritize for your users?
Once upon a time, there lived an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto. Like every other being, he chased money. (Show me the money 😉)
It’s not that Pareto wanted all of it, he just studied the relationship between wealth and their owners. And this was way back in 1896. He wanted to show the distribution of wealth among the rich and the poor.
He published his observations and it was called Cours d’économie politique (Yeah! try pronouncing it 😅).
He observed that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.
Not just that he was a good economist, he was a good gardener too. He also noticed that 20% of the peapods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.
Now, if we are talking about economics, let’s have a look at the distribution of world GDP in 1989.
Source: Human Development Report 1992,
If you are not surprised by the richest 20% and their wealth, just try to look at the Fourth and the Poorest 40%. (Who said the world is fair?)
The Law of Vital Few and Trivial Many
Had it not been for Joseph Juran, the world would not know Pareto to this scale. In 1940, our man Joseph saw a pattern in business and named it Pareto principle.
It is also known with the name of Juran’s Principle.
For his credibility, he was a pioneer in quality management, and just like Pareto, he observed it repeatedly and formulated his laws. And he was kind enough to name it after the great Pareto.
For many events, roughly 80% of the effects of a process come from just 20% of the inputs — Pareto Principle
It won’t be surprising for sales folks that the top 20% of their accounts bring 80% of their sales in the company.
And similarly, folks from the marketing team will note that 20% of their campaigns generate 80% of their leads.
Now, there are many variations of this principle and it could be called with different names such as Power-law, Pareto efficiency, Principle of factor Sparsity, etc but their roots would point to the same old Pareto Principle.
What do you observe?
Pareto is looking at all of us and he wants us to learn and implement his learning in our own lives.
He wants you to take a moment now.
He wants you to wear the Pareto hat.
He wants you to put down your own observation of 80/20 here.
There is nothing to rush for. Also, don’t get hung up on the 80/20 numbers as they could vary based on the context. Take your time and think about all the possible events where you could establish the relationship between cause and effect. I could list a few for you here.
Let’s talk about you!
Where do you spend the most time on your smartphone? Out of all the apps, how many do you check regularly?
Don’t you put the hardest efforts for your exams in the last few days or is it the entire year?
Which clothes do you wear most of the time? Do you wear all the clothes you bought or just a few of them?
Out of all the buttons, how many buttons do you press on the TV remote?
Is the 80/20 Rule everywhere?
If you would look closely, you would be amazed to realize that it exists in almost all the spaces.
On Roads
It’s not uncommon that 80% of traffics is on 20% of the roads. (I observe this phenomenon every evening 😢)
In Computer Science and feature optimization
Microsoft noted that by fixing the top 20% of the most-reported bugs, 80% of the related errors and crashes in a given system would be eliminated.
In Healthcare
Some cases of super-spreading conform to this rule where approximately 20% of infected individuals are responsible for 80% of transmissions. Think Corona!
In Crimes
It has been found in a Dunedin study that 80% of crimes are committed by 20% of criminals.
Okay! I’ll just shut up now. (Somebody, please stop me rambling 😆).
Let’s talk UX!
How to improve UX with the Pareto Principle?
It’s not that the above-mentioned examples didn’t have anything related to UX. Don’t you remember the Mircosoft example? (C’mon! Stop thinking about criminals now 🔪)
Before I proceed, just remember that 80/20 isn’t the only formulation. It could be 70/30 or 90/10 as well. Heard that phrase? — It depends!
20% of the effort will generate 80% of the results. Why not use your resources and time wisely then?
Most valuable features
Don’t spend all your time discussing how to put every possible feature in the product. Stakeholders might ask you to stuff as many features as possible.
Is this how you would allocate your precious resources even after knowing that 80% of your users would be using just 20% of the features?
Pareto would be disappointed at us!
If you want to save resources and effort, try finding the most crucial features and make them accessible for your users.
Most Errors
Try to remember the Microsoft example now. This is pretty common that 80% of the customers would be complaining repeatedly about 20% of the errors.
Don’t panic and waste time in an attempt to solve all of them. Prioritize the major ones and kill them one by one!
Most Users
Every product has its target audience and they must focus primarily on them to survive. Do you think Snapchat is targeting 50–60 years old? Do you think high-end Mercedes is being designed for 20 years old?
Don’t build and optimize for 80% of the population that rarely visits you. Build for the 20% that are loyal and regularly visits you.
Identify them, understand them, build for them.
We can keep talking about all the aspects of the Pareto Principle and its influence on UX Design but if we do so, we ourselves won’t be following the 80/20 rule.
Why talk about everything? Why not just mention the top areas which demand the most attention? And we did exactly that!
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UX Crash Course: Chapter 1
