Hick’s Law describes that the time it takes for a person to make a decision depends on the choices available to him or her. So if the number of choices increases, the time to make a decision increases logarithmically.

A very nice example of Hick’s Law that applies to user experience design are lists:

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Psychology plays a big part in a user's experience with an application. Understanding how our designs are perceived, we can make adjustments so that the apps we create are more effective in achieving the goals of the user.

- Isolation effect
- Latency and Regency Effect
- Cognitive Load
- Hick’s Law
- Gestalt Laws of Proximity

Psychology Principles for UI/UX Design

The Psychology Principles Every UI/UX Designer Needs to Know (https://uxplanet.org/the-psychology-principles-every-ui-ux-designer-needs-to-know-24116fd65778)

Psychology Priniciple for UI Design

Also known as Von Restorff effect. It predicts that when multiple similar objects are present, the one that differs from the rest is most likely to be remembered. 

This is the main reason why all call-to-actions (CTAs) look different from the rest of the action buttons on a site or application. We want users to be able to differentiate between a simple action button and a CTA, in order for them to have a clear understanding what the CTA does, whilst also remembering it throughout their use of the application or site.

Isolation Effect

This theory suggests that a user to best remember the first and last items in a series. 

This is why most applications nowadays ditch the hamburger menu and go for a bottom or top bar navigation, placing the most important user actions to the right or left. In the image below, you can see some examples from popular iOS applications. Each put the “Home” and “Profile” items all the way to the left and right.

Latency and Regency Effect

Cognitive load refers to the total amount of mental effort being used in a person’s working memory.

Cognitive load theory can be differentiated into three types:
- Intrinsic cognitive load
- Extraneous cognitive load
- Germane cognitive load

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