This week was the first of second semester and was mainly dedicated to looking at the new module we would be tackling: Designing User Experiences. We looked at the deliverable for the module, a healthcare product/service for which we would develop our own personal brief. We discussed that this module would feature a lot of research and in many ways be a precursor for our final year major project. For the first few weeks we will work in teams to help us to cover more ground in our research and get as wide a view of the current state of healthcare, the problems as well as the opportunities within the sector.
Jakob’s Law was first put forward by usability consultant Jakob Nielsen in 2000 and in basic terms says that users will expect a product to work a certain way based on their previous experiences with other similar products. In his case Nielsen was looking at websites but could just as easily be describing any product, digital or physical. When we approach a new version of a product, we are already familiar with we expect certain elements to work in a particular way, we expect it to work the same as we are already familiar with from previous experiences of a similar product.
Even when faced with a totally new product or service we will look for familiar elements and try to apply previous experience to help us work out how the product works and how we can use it. We use our mental models which we have built up through experience of different products to help us to work out how to use the new product. When our mental models match with how the new product works, we will find it much easier to adapt and use the new product with minimal effort and frustration. However, if the new product does not work in line with our mental models, we will find it frustrating to use, will likely make many errors and may even give up on using the product.
As designers Jakob’s Law shows us the importance of mental models and design convention when designing a new product or redesigning an existing one. By sticking to convention, we can reduce the amount of cognitive load our users need to expend to use our product. By reducing the cognitive load, we make the experience of using our product a much more pleasant and annoyance free experience, this improves the overall user experience of our whole product increasing the likelihood of people adopting and using the product. Of course, there is one obvious concern with applying Jakob’s Law to all our designs, surely, we just end up with every design being a copycat design of the current market leader in any specific sector.
However, this is not what Nielsen is advocating he is reminding designers not to include major changes in a design without good reason. If our design can follow convention then it should, as this will allow users to get straight to using the product for its designed purpose rather than having to spend time and effort learning a new way of using the product or reformatting an existing mental model.
For me, what I take from Jakob’s Law is that if I do want to challenge an existing design convention then I need to do a lot of research and user testing to ensure that the change is for the benefit of my users. I need to ensure it is not simply for my own personal views or for a simply a visual benefit any change must have a defined positive effect on the user experience of the product. If I cannot prove this conclusively then I should stick to the current design convention and work to make improvements in other areas of the design.
UX design is at its heart a field where the UX designer advocates for the user of a product, it is where we use design skills to make a product enjoyable and pleasant to use. Jakob’s Law is an important guideline which we can keep in mind while designing and use to assess finished designs to ensure we are keeping our users and most importantly their experience at the core of all our design decisions. Our users are humans and Jakob Nielsen is famous for advocating Human-Centric design using his law to guide our designs can only make them more suitable for all users.