Hick‘s Law – or why less is more in UX
If you ever struggled with people leaving your site too quickly without even trying to explore it, you might be thinking: “But my website has so much to offer! The quality content, the amount of options and valuable information they can find there… And they just give up.”
Well, that‘s true. Even though the quality and quantity of the content might be outstanding, once it has too many stimuli or it looks too dense, it becomes overwhelming. Most of the time users don‘t come to your website to read every single word. Instead, they just scan it as a whole at first and catch some keywords. And if they don‘t seem to find what they were looking for within a few seconds, they leave.
“The time and the effort it takes to make a decision, increases with the number of choices. Less is faster and easier to remember.” – Hick‘s Law
Hick’s law, also called Hick-Hyman’s law, is named after psychologists Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman. The law explains how to keep users engaged on the site and how to help them with their decisions, rather than overwhelming them with immense options at once.
