Overview
The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.
Takeaways
- Minimize choices when response times are critical to increase decision time.
- Break complex tasks into smaller steps in order to decrease cognitive load.
- Avoid overwhelming users by highlighting recommended options.
- Use progressive onboarding to minimize cognitive load for new users.
- Be careful not to simplify to the point of abstraction.
Origins
Hick’s Law (or the Hick-Hyman Law) is named after a British and an American psychologist team of William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman. In 1952, this pair set out to examine the relationship between the number of stimuli present and an individual’s reaction time to any given stimulus. As you would expect, the more stimuli to choose from, the longer it takes the user to make a decision on which one to interact with. Users bombarded with choices have to take time to interpret and decide, giving them work they don’t want.
Further Reading
Related
Doherty Threshold
Productivity soars when a computer and its users interact at a pace (<400ms) that ensures that neither has to wait on the other.
Fitts’s Law
The time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.
Miller’s Law
The average person can only keep 7 (plus or minus 2) items in their working memory.