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Fitts's Law: Why the Easy Button Wins
Fitts's Law explains how target size and proximity dictate interaction speed, a concept usable for both accessible design and manipulative dark patterns.
What: Fitts's Law posits that reaching a target is proportional to its distance and size. It also covers 'chunking,' a psychological strategy for organizing information to respect the four-item limit of human working memory.
Takeaway: Increase the hit area of primary action buttons and group related UI elements to reduce cognitive load and improve conversion.
Deep dive
- Fitts's Law: Reaching time = a + b
- log2(D/W + 1), where D is distance and W is width.
- Magic Pixels: Elements flush against screen edges (like menu bars) are technically infinite in size.
- Dark Patterns: Designers can weaponize Fitts's Law by making 'unsubscribe' links tiny and far away.
- Chunking: Information should be grouped into small, meaningful units because working memory capacity is approximately four distinct items.
Decoder
- Dark Patterns: UI/UX design choices crafted to deceive users into doing things they did not intend, such as signing up for subscriptions.
- Working Memory: The temporary storage system that handles small amounts of information for immediate use.
Original article
Chunking: How to Design for a Brain That Can Only Hold Four Things
Your working memory holds about four things, not seven. Chunking groups loose information into meaningful units that slip past that limit, the psychology behind phone numbers, scannable pages, multi-step forms, and grouped navigation.
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