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Design principle: Hick’s Law — quick decision making
This week’s design principle is focusing on Hick’s Law, which is related to the KISS principle. Let’s first say a few words to introduce Hick’s Law.
Do you remember the old video games from 20 years ago and how much fun it was to play them? The controls were so simple you could learn to play in seconds. For example, Super Mario with just left, right, and jump controls.
In comparison, today’s input controls of modern gaming consoles and PC games are offering so many choices and combinations. All these controls, multiply the options user can choose in any certain situation.
Having so many options makes learning the game and enjoying it much harder and time consuming. One of the reasons is explained by Hick’s Law.
Hick’s Law predicts that the time and the effort it takes to make a decision, increases with the number of options.