Laws of UX

What it is

Laws of UX is a website by designer Jon Yablonski that collects best practices designers can consider when building interfaces. Each "law" gets its own page with a short definition, the origins of the idea, key takeaways and further reading. The collection includes principles such as:

• Aesthetic-Usability Effect: people often perceive attractive designs as more usable.
• Hick's Law: decision time grows with the number and complexity of choices.
• Fitts's Law: the time to reach a target depends on its distance and size.
• Jakob's Law: users spend most of their time on other sites and expect yours to work the same way.
• Law of Proximity, Law of Similarity, Law of Common Region and other Gestalt principles about grouping.
• Doherty Threshold, Miller's Law, Cognitive Load, Choice Overload, Goal-Gradient Effect and more.

Why it is worth your time

These principles explain why many design guidelines exist. When a usability test shows people missing a button, Fitts's law or visual hierarchy often explains it; when a menu with twenty options confuses people, Hick's law and choice overload do. Knowing the vocabulary helps you justify decisions in critiques, handoffs and portfolio case studies.

How to use it

• Read the whole list once in the first weeks of learning; it takes an hour or two.
• Return to specific pages when you design something related: grouping (proximity, common region), navigation (Jakob's law), forms and choices (Hick's law), buttons and targets (Fitts's law).
• Use it to phrase feedback in critiques: "these two groups feel like one because of proximity" is clearer than "it looks off".

Limits

These are heuristics, not strict laws of physics. Some, such as Miller's law, are often misapplied: "seven plus or minus two" is about working memory, not a rule that menus must have seven items. Read the takeaways and the sources, and test with real users rather than treating any principle as proof.

Free or paid?

The website is free. The author also sells a book and posters; they are optional.

What you can do after

Explain common interface decisions with named principles, spot likely problems in a design before testing, and give clearer, less subjective feedback.

Common questions

Is it only for designers? No. Developers who build interfaces benefit just as much, especially from Fitts's law, Jakob's law and the Doherty Threshold on response times.