01
Aesthetic-Usability Effect
If something looks good, people believe it works better, and forgive small problems.
Use it: Polish matters, but don't let a pretty screen hide a usability problem in testing.
Free guide · 30 laws
The psychology behind good design, one law at a time: what it means in plain words, a little animation that shows it, and how to use it in your next screen.
7 laws
The brain groups, sorts and simplifies what it sees before we even think about it.
01
If something looks good, people believe it works better, and forgive small problems.
Use it: Polish matters, but don't let a pretty screen hide a usability problem in testing.
02
Things inside the same box or background feel like they belong together.
Use it: Use cards and panels to group related content instead of extra labels.
03
Things that sit close together look like a group.
Use it: Put a label right next to its field, and leave more space between groups than inside them.
04
We see complicated shapes as the simplest shapes that could make them.
Use it: Simple, clear forms are understood faster. Icons especially.
05
Things that look alike, by colour, shape or size, seem to do the same job.
Use it: Make every link look like a link and every button like a button. Different jobs, different looks.
06
Things joined by a line or a shared colour feel more related than things that aren't.
Use it: Connect the steps of a flow with a line, or the parts of a group with one colour.
07
When everything looks the same, the one thing that's different is the one we remember.
Use it: Make the most important action stand out, and only one. If everything is loud, nothing is.
8 laws
Attention and memory are small. Good interfaces ask for very little of either.
08
We remember long information better when it's broken into small groups.
Use it: Show phone numbers, card numbers and long pages in chunks.
09
Every extra thing on a screen costs a little brain power to understand.
Use it: Remove anything that doesn't help the task in front of the person.
10
Most people can hold only about seven things in mind at once, often fewer.
Use it: Don't make people remember things between screens. Show them again.
11
Our short-term memory is a small, leaky box: new things push old ones out.
Use it: Keep what people need visible, like the items in a cart or the step they're on.
12
We remember the first and last items in a list best, and the middle least.
Use it: Put the most important items at the start and end of menus and lists.
13
Unfinished tasks stick in our minds more than finished ones.
Use it: Show progress on incomplete tasks, like a profile that's 70% done, to invite people back.
14
We judge an experience by its best or worst moment, and how it ended.
Use it: Design a delightful high point and a good ending, like a clear success screen.
15
People focus on what matters to their goal and tune the rest out, including ads.
Use it: Important content shouldn't look like an ad or a banner, or it will be ignored.
6 laws
People choose fast, lean on habit and rarely read the instructions.
16
Too many options make choosing harder, and people sometimes give up.
Use it: Offer a few good options, recommend one, and let people filter the rest.
17
The more choices there are, the longer it takes to pick one.
Use it: Break big decisions into steps and highlight the most likely choice.
18
Our thinking takes shortcuts that tilt our judgement, often without us noticing.
Use it: Test with real people and real data, not just your own instincts.
19
People expect a product to work the way they think it works.
Use it: Match what people already believe, like a cart that behaves like a cart.
20
People spend most of their time on other apps, and expect yours to work the same way.
Use it: Use familiar patterns. Save your originality for what makes your product special.
21
People skip the instructions and start using things straight away.
Use it: Teach inside the interface, at the moment it's needed, not in a manual up front.
5 laws
Speed, distance and progress change how hard something feels.
22
When a product answers in under about 0.4 seconds, people stay in the flow.
Use it: Respond instantly, even if it's just a loading state or an optimistic update.
23
Big targets that are close by are faster and easier to hit.
Use it: Make buttons large enough to tap, and keep them near where the thumb or cursor already is.
24
We get absorbed when a task is challenging enough, but not too hard.
Use it: Remove friction, give clear feedback and match the difficulty to the person.
25
The closer we get to a goal, the faster we move towards it.
Use it: Show progress, and give people a head start, like a stamp card with two stamps already.
26
A task grows to fill the time you give it.
Use it: Make tasks quicker than people expect: autofill, sensible defaults, fewer fields.
4 laws
Rules of thumb for deciding what to build, and how much.
27
Of two solutions that work, the simpler one is usually better.
Use it: Remove things until removing more would break it.
28
Roughly 80% of results come from 20% of the causes.
Use it: Find the few features most people use most, and make those excellent first.
29
Be flexible in what you accept from people, and precise in what you give back.
Use it: Accept dates, phone numbers and names in any sensible format and tidy them up yourself.
30
Every system has some complexity that can't be removed, only moved.
Use it: Move the complexity to the product and the team, so the person doesn't have to carry it.
Free download
All 30 laws as cards: a picture and the name on the front, plain words and a tip on the back. Tap or hover a card to flip it. Print them for your desk, or keep them in Figma next to your designs.
Knowing the laws is the start. Use them in real screens with our free, hands-on Learn Figma course, or learn the whole craft with mentors in the full UX UI Open course.