Hicks Law

Hick’s Law or the Hick–Hyman Law, named after British and American psychologists William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman, describes the time a person takes to make a decision based on the number of available choices introduced.

Hick’s Law states that increasing the number of choices will increase the decision time logarithmically and is represented as follows:

RT = a + b log<sub>2</sub>(n)

Implications of Hick’s Law

It has been shown that increasing the number of choices available to an individual does not improve efficiency. Instead, it leads to a reduction in the individual’s ability to make a decision and a lower level of user satisfaction.

When designing web interfaces, it is crucial to consider Hick’s Law and incorporate the following guidelines to facilitate decision-making time and enhance the overall user experience:

1. Limit the number of options
2. Group content
3. User of “other”
4. Hide advanced settings
5. Do not over simplify to the point of abstraction

Example