World's Most Powerful UX Laws: 6 Lessons from Spotify, Airbnb, Duolingo, and more
We reviewed the biggest apps in the world - here's what we learnt.
👋 Hello! Welcome to this week’s ADPList’s Newsletter; 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 weekly advice column. Each Tuesday, we tackle design, building products, and accelerating careers. We’re looking for sponsors! If you’re interested to sponsor our newsletter, let’s chat!
Today’s newsletter is brought to you by PixCap
Mix & Match 10,000+ 3D illustrations and use AI to generate amazing outputs in different styles! Create modern graphic designs, ads, and UI elements with Pixcap’s web editor and AI stylist :)
Thanks for being an ADPList’s Newsletter Sponsor! 🙏
World's Most Powerful UX Laws: 6 Lessons from Spotify, Airbnb, Duolingo, and more.
Believe it or not, I acquired my design skills by utilizing the apps I use on a daily basis, without relying on platforms like Dribbble or Behance (surprise surprise 👀). We wanted to share this knowledge with you, so this week’s newsletter is to explain how prominent apps Spotify, YouTube, Medium, Twitter, Pinterest, Netflix, Uber, Instagram and more, adhere to the fundamental principles of UX that you may have overlooked or not yet consolidated.
We will explore the 6 Laws of UX implemented by the apps I personally use. I assure you that you will find them captivating, as it will enhance your design abilities and make you a 1% better designer today, guaranteed.
TLDR;
The Aesthetic-Usability Effect
Law of Prägnanz (Spotify)
The Fitts Law (Airbnb)
Peak-End Rule & Serial Position Effect (Duolingo)
Jacob’s Law (TikTok)
Von Restorff Effect (Spotify, Evernote)
1. The Aesthetic-Usability Effect
Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable.
Humans love beauty, there is no doubt about that and this applies in design where user love to use eye-appealing design, that in design terms we say aesthetically pleasing design. while using an aesthetically great design users forgive minor mistakes and also love to use it (yes, UX = UI 🏴☠️).
By using this UX law you can make your own design much more user-friendly and it also helps in better review of the app which in return helps you to grow.
But, only aesthetics don’t matter in long run, in the short-run users might happily ask for the help but after some time, they’ll get frustrated and stop using your app.
🏴☠️ Key takeaway
An aesthetically pleasing design creates a positive response in people’s brains and leads them to believe the design actually work better.
People are more tolerant of minor usability issues when the design of a product or service is aesthetically pleasing.
Visually pleasing design can mask usability problems and prevent issues from being discovered during usability testing.
2. Law of Prägnanz
People will perceive and interpret ambiguous or complex images as the simplest form possible, because it is the interpretation that requires the least cognitive effort of user.