Laws of UX Design: Jakob’s Law
Have you ever wondered why most modern apps and physical products like laptops and smartphones look and work almost the same way?
Experienced designers most likely would respond right away that it’s a result of applying design patterns and best practices in the process of product design. And they would be 100% right!
But have you ever thought about why best practices and design patterns emerged in the first place? Why is it a good idea to include and follow them in your design process?
Answers to those questions lay in human psychology, more precisely in the way we are learning and interacting with the world around us.
In the year 2000 usability expert Jakob Nielsen formulated a thesis which states that users expect digital products like websites to work the same way as all other, similar products they already know.
“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.” Jakob Nielsen “End of Web Design”
Observation that Nielsen has described encourages us designers to follow common design patterns to allow users to focus on content or task at hand without unnecessary obstacles from the interfaces of our products.
Unusual solutions or concepts, that people are not familiar with, are often leading to frustration and abandonment of websites or products because the interface is not aligned with their expectations.
Cumulative experiences described by Nielsen help users use new products because they can easily reference what they can do and how to do it based on their previous interaction with similar solutions.
This is probably one of the most important findings in UX Design and it’s directly connected to the psychology term of mental models.
Mental models are things that we build in our minds to make a sense of surrounding reality. Our brains are too limited to keep all of the details about the surrounding world so we use models to simplify complex things to more manageable, smaller chunks.
For example, if you have ever flown on a plane, you most likely have a general idea on how your next flight would look like. We create a model of how the system works and then we project those past experiences to any new, similar situations.
Utilisation of that knowledge helps UX Designers tremendously because we can adjust our projects to the mental models of our product users providing the best user experience to them.
There are many techniques that allow us to discover our target group mental models, one of the most popular are user personas, user interviews or user empathy and journey maps.
Now, let’s put the theory to the test and compare this mobile app design to the next one. As you can see I’ve purposefully put some of the design elements out of their typical place. Potentially you could still use an interface like this, but most of the time, any unusual solution would lead to very poor user experience and abandonment of the product.
One of the most prevalent examples of proper utilisation of users’ mental models comes from the car industry. From climate control, to gear selection or gas and brake pedals, it’s full of well established patterns.
Most of the successful products use known design patterns and mental models to allow users to focus on what is important for them without the need to learn how they work from scratch.
This is why most of the modern apps look and work almost the same way.
You may now think that a prospect like this for a designer is pretty boring, because everything looks and works the same way. But, try to imagine a reality where every similar product works in a totally unfamiliar way and you need to learn it every time before you even start using it for whatever you need it for.
That’s why any major redesign of an established app or website is so challenging, and it could be really disastrous if not approached with user needs in mind. Good practice regarding redesigns is to allow users to use older versions for a limited amount of time, and give them a choice when they want to start using newer versions.
Following design patterns and best practices in your projects doesn’t mean that there is no place for innovation. But, before you propose something brand new, or unusual, make sure that you have your users in mind and you are not affecting usability.
If you would like to learn more, with more engaging content, check out my YouTube channel here!
Check out Laws of UX website by Jon Jablonski here. Also check out the original article about End of Web Design here.
