Fitt's law & Hick's law
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- doctor
Do you ever use Fitt's and/or Hick's law, when designing an interface? Or when evaluating one?
How do you find them useful from a practical perspective?
For the uninitiated:
• Hick's law (also Hick-Hyman law): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hic…
• Fitt's law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fit…
- rafalski0
Fitts' boils down to "make the menu bigger" in a way. A brilliant implementation of it is Apple's Expose - corners are gigantic areas when you count the area outside screen (this is where your mouse actually gets when targeting Expose corners).
This also is why OSX toolbar (top edge of the screen) is better than Windows toolbar (top edge of a window). Apple's is indefinitely high thus easier to reach.
Apple's close window button on the other hand is the opposite, it's so small it's clear they don't want you to use it.
I'd like to read more on Hick's law though.
- doctor0
I know the theory quite well, but thanks for sharing anyway. I'm mostly interested in hearing about how you use is practically. Like would you calculate how big your navigation should be, for example?
@Rafalski: Hick's law describes the time it takes for someone to make a decision as a result of the possible choices he has, for example a name in the phone book. In some cases, you could use this for designing a menu.
- 7point340
i wasn't sure which link to click on first so i closed the browser altogther
- doctor0
Haha, 7point34... Well, some times it actually makes sense to calculate the efficiency of your design, but I do have my doubts of these methods' practical value for the average web-solution (hence this thread).
- canuck0
Is useful in terms of Navs keeping the number of options down.
- doctor0
@Canuck: Correct, however it doesn't meassure efficiency, like Fitt's and Hick's models do. They are descriptive tools whereas Miller's 7±2 theory is simply (don't get me wrong) a shot at the average young adult's short memory capabilities.
I can recommend the original article, it's worth a read: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Mi…
Now - back on topic! :)
- ninjasavant0
Good read. It's pretty intuitive for anyone who works with users and user data but I'm in the process of quantifying visual style in terms of perceived quality of UI implementation and affect on task completion rate and duration so this will help me along with that. Thanks for the link!
- Sounds interesting.doctor
- how many of those words did you just make up?ian
- lolninjasavant
- doctor0
I guess they're mostly for HCI nerds. :)