behavioral

Jakob's Law

Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.

Expectations

Users will transfer expectations they have built around one familiar product to another that appears similar.

Existing mental models

By leveraging existing mental models, we can create superior user experiences in which the users can focus on their tasks, rather than on learning new models.

Minimize discord

When making changes, minimize discord by empowering users to continue using a familiar version for a limited time.

familiarityusability

Origin

Jakob’s Law was coined by Jakob Nielsen, a User Advocate and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group, which he co- founded with Dr Donald Norman (former VP of Research at Apple Computer). Dr Nielsen established the ‘discount usability engineering’ movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces and has invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation.