George A. Miller introduced Miller’s Law in 1956. This law states that the average person can hold about 7 items in their working memory at once, plus or minus two. This law has shaped everything from phone number formatting to UX design. Millers law calls for simplicity without sacrificing depth of information. This can be done by organizing information into meaningful chunks of text and limiting the number of menus, parent pages, child pages and grandchild pages that a user must go through to select.

William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman developed Hick’s Law which states that the time it takes to decide increases logarithmically with the number of choices. This means that more presented options will result in slower decisions. Fewer choices result in faster action which is helpful for creating call to actions. Fewer choices isn’t the only thing to consider, hierarchy and design clarity are crucial to present information that matters and guide the user.

Both laws really work well together when creating webpages and call to actions. When applied correctly the user will be more likely to continue navigating through the website, retain important information, and ultimately make a purchase. I look forward to using this information in my current and future work.