Jakob’s Law revisited: Don’t reinvent the wheel, but sometimes do
Imagine, Apple decides to come up with the idea of a new keyboard with keys in alphabetical order, would it be convenient for you? Or, one day a car manufacturer decides to switch the accelerator and brake pedals, that would just wreak havoc.
Generally, discomfort is caused, if there’s a deviation from standard designs. Creativity sometimes needs to take a back seat for the sake of an important feature, predictability.
Users usually like to be able to anticipate what an experience will be like, based on past experiences.
Jakob’s Law:
This concept in psychology is a mainstay in the general world of UX principles. This principle, coined by Jakob Nielsen, “the king of usability”, states:
“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.”
Users get the cumulative experience of all other websites, that adds up to their understanding of how a website should work, what are the design conventions on the internet and form their expectations for a product.
So, when users land on your product, they should ideally know how to use it (for the most part), instead of having to do a process of relearning. Instead of having to gain new muscle memory, the user can now focus on your product, services and content to better fulfil your product goals.
Users want to feel secure and comfortable while navigating through, without having to worry about to accidentally doing an unwanted action.
What should the designers do?
Design for patterns for which are familiar to the users.
“Don’t reinvent the wheel, just redesign it.”
While it’s essential to study the customers to understand their behaviour and designing a solution tailored to their needs, researching the competitors/counterparts in the domain is equally important, to get a sense of what’s users’ expectations from you.
This way, we can focus on their strengths and improve upon the lacking areas.
UX Examples
We can see this law being applied thoroughly, particularly on websites.
For instance, the search engines, Google, Yahoo, Bing (and more) having their search bar amidst the white screen, e-commerce websites having the ‘Cart’ icon on the top right corner, the universal blue colour of text links all across the web, or placing the ‘Send’ button on the bottom right corner of a phone screen; the list goes on.
Deviating from such norms is the recipe for confusion and frustration that could cost you a customer.
Here’s an article on how Facebook stirred a ruckus amongst its users by a minor redesign.
Users are just one click away from leaving your website forever.
It’s okay to deviate from the norms if it assists the user
Google’s Material Design and Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines are the benchmarks for great UX Design, but sometimes there needs to be a deviation to serve the user better. For instance, using number pad in combination with three input fields for dates can provide better usability than iOS barrel picker, which could be tedious if the list is long.
To Conclude
Jakob’s law is a principle that designers should rarely veer from. However, without shifts from features in design that are obviously flawed, a break from the norm (no matter how small) is crucial not just to the singular instance where it is implemented, but to the entire domain of design itself. As times pass and the content of the digital user keeps growing, it is important to understand that heuristics of usage will change and evolve, which ultimately means that a hard-and-fast approach to solving solutions via Jakob’s law could hinder design.
Key Takeaway
- We tend to develop a liking for things that are familiar to us.
- Users will arrive with expectations that are formed by using other websites and similar products.
- Navigation becomes effortless, and they can focus on their task.
- Knowing your users and competitors forms the foundation for building a product, understanding contextual motivations and pain-points are a must.
- Avoid being polar towards uniqueness or individuality, i.e. to blindly copy other product or creating an entirely unique product. You need to find that crucial sweet spot.
- Apply this law to your context, take an already existing solution and amplify its effectiveness using your creativity.
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
Follow Canvs on Instagram and LinkedIn. Don’t forget to follow us here on Medium as well for more design-related content.
