The Design Psychologist | Psychology for UX, Product, Service, Instructional, Interior, and Game Designers The Shape of Choice: What Hick’s Law Really Reveals About Decision Time
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Jul 28, 2025 Discover how too many choices can hamper user experience through the lens of Hick's Law. This principle reveals that more options often lead to longer decision times, creating cognitive overload. Learn practical design strategies to streamline choices and enhance usability. When should you reduce options, and when might it backfire? Gain insights on making interfaces feel faster and more intuitive by leveraging psychological principles.
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Fruit Choice Experiment
- Imagine choosing fruits in an experiment where each additional fruit option adds decision time.
- A robot systematically checks each fruit until it finds the right one, illustrating a linear decision time increase.
Exponential Decision Time
- Algorithms that add more factors for each option increase decision time exponentially.
- This creates a steep curve punishing decision making with extra options.
Human Efficient Decision Algorithm
- Human decision-making follows a logarithmic curve, efficiently halving choices each time.
- This approach uses fewer bits and is faster than linear or exponential algorithms.