Laws of UX, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1. Jakob’s Law

Users spend most of their time on other sites, and they prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.

Key Takeaways

• Users will transfer expectations they have built around one familiar product to another that appears similar.

• By leveraging existing mental models, we can create superior user experiences in which the users can focus on their tasks rather than on learning new models.

• When making changes, minimize mental model mismatches by empowering users to continue using a familiar version for a limited time.

Overview

There is something incredibly valuable to be found in familiarity. Familiarity helps the people interacting with a digital product or service know immediately how to use it, from interacting with the navigation to finding the content they need to processing the layout and visual cues on the page in order to understand the choices available to them. The cumulative effect of mental effort saved ensures a lower cognitive load. In other words, the less mental energy users have to spend learning an interface, the more they can dedicate to achieving their objectives. The easier we make it for people to achieve their goals, the more likely they are to do so successfully.

As designers, it is our objective to ensure people successfully achieve their goals when using the interfaces we’ve built by eliminating ...