Design Laws

2. Classify the problem

• choice for too many options, hard comparison, indecision
• attention for weak hierarchy, banner blindness, competing stimuli
• memory for recall burden, multi-step flows, dense interfaces
• grouping for layout organization, scanability, relation between elements
• learnability for onboarding, conventions, mental models, redesigns
• speed for lag, waiting, excessive interaction cost, slow task completion
• emotion for delight, trust, memorable peaks, key endings
• resilience for messy input, variable usage paths, edge cases

3. Pick 1 primary law and up to 3 supporting laws

• Prefer a clear primary law that explains the biggest failure mode.
• Add complementary laws only when they change the recommendation.
• If two laws conflict, name the tradeoff explicitly instead of pretending both can be maximized.

4. Turn laws into concrete design moves

• Specify what to add, remove, group, reveal, reorder, prefill, highlight, or defer.
• Tie each recommendation to the affected UI surface: nav, search, cards, pricing, onboarding, forms, dashboards, settings, empty states, notifications.
• Favor recognition over recall, clarity over decoration, and resilient defaults over brittle ideal-user assumptions.

5. Validate

• Explain what to test in usability review, analytics, or experiment design.
• If reviewing an existing UI, point to exact components or flows and identify likely regressions.

Output Shape

When applying this skill, structure the answer around:

• Problem
• Primary law
• Supporting laws
• Recommended changes
• Tradeoffs
• How to validate

If the user asks for a critique or review, lead with findings, not theory.

Compound Rules

• Familiarity beats novelty by default. Break conventions only with a clear payoff and a testing plan.
• Simplicity is not abstraction. Reduce complexity, but do not hide critical meaning.
• Progressive reveal is useful only when hidden functionality remains discoverable.
• Salience should be scarce. If everything is emphasized, nothing is emphasized.
• Offload complexity from the user to the system whenever engineering can absorb it safely.
• Perceived speed matters, but fake progress that breaks trust is not acceptable.

Frequent Design Mappings

• Navigation overload: Hick's Law, Choice Overload, Jakob's Law, Serial Position Effect
• Dense content or dashboards: Chunking, Cognitive Load, Law of Proximity, Law of Common Region
• Forms and checkout: Fitts's Law, Postel's Law, Parkinson's Law, Working Memory
• Onboarding and complex products: Paradox of the Active User, Tesler's Law, Mental Model, Selective Attention
• Pricing and comparison: Choice Overload, Von Restorff Effect, Pareto Principle
• Search and findability: Hick's Law, Selective Attention, Law of Proximity, Jakob's Law
• Progress and completion: Goal-Gradient Effect, Zeigarnik Effect, Peak-End Rule
• Redesigns or disruptive ideas: Jakob's Law balanced against novelty guidance in the article patterns

Anti-Patterns

• Citing a law without changing the interface.
• Using a law as absolute truth instead of a directional heuristic.
• Applying too many laws and producing contradictory advice.
• Confusing aesthetic polish with usability proof.
• Treating cognitive load only as a visual issue; it is also about task structure and decision burden.

Source Notes

This skill is grounded in the current lawsofux.com site structure that includes:

• 30 law pages
• 8 editorial articles
• top-level Articles, Book, Cards, and Info pages

The source map records the exact pages visited during the crawl.