How do you get users to view what you want them to?
5 laws of UX that help improve discoverability and access.
Discoverability is the ease with which the users can discover a product feature and content.
It is a critical aspect of product design since good discoverability is responsible for a user’s task completion in a frictionless manner. It also helps them find new content and features that a product has to offer.
Without further ado, here are some laws that can help with improving the discoverability of your product.
Think of these as mental models that can be plugged into elements of your current project through the eyes of other product companies.
1. Jakob’s Law: Don’t reinvent the wheel
“Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.”
Designers love experimenting and coming up with new approaches, but reinventing the existing design norms isn’t always better.
Sometimes introducing new and unfamiliar patterns gets in the way of the usability of the product.
It gets challenging for the user to understand the page. The time a user wants to spend to complete their goal is lost on understanding the interface.
Users usually like to be able to anticipate what an experience will be like, based on past experiences.
Designers should structure out the interface in a way that relies on existing patterns so that users can expect to find the features intuitively.
2. Hick’s Law: Reduce the number of choices to be made
It’s essential to know that it’s not possible to make all the elements/features equally easy to find by placing everything on the interface since that’ll only add to the complexity of the product and too much information for a user to process. Moreover, the clutter draws attention away from the most essential features.
According to Hick’s law, the increasing number of choices on an interface increases the time the user takes to make a decision. Hick’s law helps designers keep in check the number of choices they offer to the user on the interface.
In short, less the visual clutter, more the focus on essential features, faster the user’s decision-making. Keep it simple silly.
This brings us to the next concept.
3. Progressive Disclosure: Prioritize important features first
Progressive disclosure is an interaction design pattern in which the content is sequenced over several screens to prevent information overload for the user.
Essentially, content management is done in a way that the interface design progresses naturally, from simpler to more complex items.
In the first instance, the user should come across only the key/primary features of the product. However, the advanced/rarely used features are unveiled later on in secondary screens upon request, making the flow simpler.
This, too, in a way, is used to reduce the visual clutter on the interface.
It helps prioritize more relevant features and content on the interface and increases its visibility. Enhanced visibility, is in turn, enhanced discoverability.
4. Law of Proximity: Group related features together
The law of proximity tells us that items placed near each other are perceived to be logically grouped together. Proximity helps to establish a relationship with nearby objects.
In design, the features that are closely related should be placed together or in logical groups. When the items are placed in a logical grouping, users know where to find a particular feature. Users don’t have to search through all features entirely placed without a proper content hierarchy.
It helps users understand and comprehend information faster and more efficiently.
5. Law of Closure: Indicate the presence of more content
The law of closure states that the human eye tends to perceive incomplete shapes/objects as a whole. Whenever there is a discontinuation or a break in a pattern, we look for continuing, smooth patterns to fill in the gaps.
This law can be employed to make interface elements more discoverable. In the image shown above, there is an incomplete circle at the end of Instagram stories. This suggests that there’s more content, and a swipe gesture is needed.
The same can be observed on Netflix too. The movies and TV show carousels have incomplete rectangles at the end of each swipe, indicating more movie options in the carousel. Moreover, Netflix uses visual cues to let users know they can discover and browse more movies on the right.
Closing thoughts:
Designers should work in the direction of creating intuitive designs, subtly helping users navigate through the product effortlessly. Discoverability is all about ensuring users find what they need because what they can’t find/discover doesn’t exist for them.
Key Takeaways:
- Good discoverability helps users effortlessly discover what the product has to offer.
- The designers should stick to the existing design norms for users to find features intuitively.
- Reducing visual clutter on an interface helps keep the focus on more valuable features.
- Progressive disclosure helps structure content, from simpler to more complex items, to enhance the visibility of essential content.
- Items placed together are associated together. It assists users to find related features under relevant groups.
- Partly visible content on a carousel indicates that a swipe gesture is needed to discover more content.
The Canvs Editorial team comprises of: Editorial Writer and Researcher- Paridhi Agrawal, the Editor’s Desk- Aalhad Joshi and Debprotim Roy, and Content Operations- Abin Rajan
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