Hick’s Law — Do you know the law that makes or breaks a UX designer?
Why our users have been smashing keyboards everywhere.
Let us start this with a life-changing situation in a disaster.
You are standing right in front of the control board and you are left with the last ten seconds of your life. The nuclear reactor is overheating and it’s going to turn into the biggest disaster this planet has ever faced!
Question — Can you make a simple choice to press a button? Or would you look for a manual to shut it down?
Who’s the Villain?
You might keep reading these laws again and again but if you don’t know the characters of this great story, you’ll probably never use them in real life.
Like every other story, this too has multiple villains but we will face them one by one.
Villain №1 — The Killer Remote
It might be hard to believe today that this army of remotes could have caused multiple headaches to our parents and grandparents.
There have been multiple instances when I too was defeated by the complexity of these buttons. (I considered myself pretty good but it turned out otherwise :D)
I have witnessed the faces of my people turning red. I have witnessed them cursing the good tv and I have witnessed them just shutting everything down.
You are an experienced and skilled warrior but don’t you make the mistake of underestimating the enemy for everybody else.
Don’t believe me?
Try this with your lovely grandparents who are still smiling at you!
Villain №2 — Super Sharp Menu
If you still haven’t experienced this battle, you are not from this planet.
How many times did you pass the menu to your partner just because you didn’t want to face the pain of deciding what’s great?
How many times did you put the menu down only to ask the waiter — “Hey! what would you recommend here?”
Did you leave the battlefield? I mean you entered with excitement into a restaurant, then fought hard with the sharp menu, only to leave the restaurant!
Don’t feel too bad. It’s okay! You are not the only one who was defeated by these thin and super sharp restaurant menus.
Villain №3 — Never Ending List
Do you remember our childhood days when we were still using MS Paint?
Do you remember how we kept changing the colors and fonts all day to create a masterpiece?
Even today as Designers, we keep pressing the next arrow key to figure out the best possible font. This is called paralysis by analysis.
When selecting from a long list of tv channels, or a long list of movies to be watched on Nextflix, when do you stop at one?
Everyone has been a victim of this powerful enemy called a never-ending list. It has won many battles and still keeps winning.
The entry of our Hero
To save humanity from the brutalities of these villains, not one but two of our heroes took birth in 1952 — A British and an American psychologist team of William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman.
They fought back and they fought hard. They examined the relationship between the number of stimuli present and an individual’s reaction time to any given stimulus.
They forged a weapon and it’s called — Hick’s Law.
RT = a + b log2 (n)
“RT” is the reaction time, “(n)” is the number of stimuli present, and “a” and “b” are constants that depends on the kind of task and conditions.
Now, you might be looking for a simple and plain definition of Hick’s law. If that’s the case, your wish is humbly granted immediately.
“The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices” — Hick’s Law
Generally, the application of Hick’s Law is simple — reduce the number of stimuli and get a faster decision-making process.
How to use Hick’s Law?
To be precise here and without rambling of words, please follow these two instructions.
1. Categorize choices
Create categories and sub-categories as they are done in the library.
A good example of this would be Amazon’s way of shopping categories.
2. Obscuring complexity
Break down complex tasks into smaller tasks and put them on different screens.
Remember, how Linkedin would onboard you by asking information in a step by step manner?
Also, don’t oversimplify otherwise your users would drop due to too many smaller chunks.
If the above two instructions are too theoretical, here is the analytical approach for you. (Please don’t point fingers at your friend for no reason 😐)
Time spent
If users spend too little time, probably they left without achieving their goal. Too much of time, then they are struggling with information architecture. Try to find the sweet little spot considering the goals of your product.
Page Views
In a situation where you created a complex navigation menu, your users would probably abandon your product and it would lead to a lower count of page views compared to smooth navigation where goals could be achieved easily.
Obviously, these metrics could play a lot of different meanings when it comes to different products such as blogs.
How Hick’s Law defeated those villains?
Let’s not make this article bigger than what it already is.
If you allow me, I would love to explain this by the use of pictures. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. (Am I getting lazy here? :D)
Are you still wondering about the never-ending list Villain?
I knew it! You will find it and you will defeat it!
Are there stories to validate them?
Yes! There are. And you can put them in the arsenal of your weapons.
We might often come across these statements from our stakeholders where they too are thinking about the user.
“If you want to provide the best-in-class experience to our users, just give more options. Just show everything on one screen. No clicks whatsoever!” — Not so wise man
Probably this wise man isn’t aware of the above-mentioned enemies or loves to ignore reality.
If you ever face such a wise man, recite the story of the Cobra effect or the Jam experiment!
Cobra Effect
When an attempted solution to a problem makes the problem worse, as a type of unintended consequence.
We’ll talk more about this in the upcoming articles.
The Jam Experiment
In 2000, psychologists at Stanford University published a study about jams.
They found that while the big display table of 24 jams generated more interest, people were far less likely to purchase a jar of a jam than in the case of the smaller display of 6 Jams(about ten times less likely).
The study shows that while choice seems appealing, at first sight, choice overload generates the wrong results.
Again, more details in the next article. (Sorry to keep you waiting but as they say — all good things take time :D)
Continue Reading
UX Crash Course: Chapter 3
References
Hick, W. E. (1 March 1952). “On the rate of gain of information” (PDF). Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Hyman, R (March 1953). “Stimulus information as a determinant of reaction time”. Journal of Experimental Psychology
