What is UX Design?

User experience (UX) design s the process of creating products and services that provide a positive and intuitive experience for users. UX designers work to understand the needs and behaviors of their target audience in order to create such designs. Parkinson's Law is a principle of UX design that can help create a better experience for the user.

Background of Parkinson's Law

Parkinson's Law was thought of in a humorous essay by Cyril Northcote Parkinson, a British naval historian in 1955. In this essay, he wrote that "work expands to fill the time available for its completion."

Parkinson's Law suggests that the amount of work required to complete a task is inversely proportional to the time available to complete it.

We can notice this Law in our daily lives. For example, if we are given a month to write a one-page essay, the work will usually expand to take up the whole month because of the far due date. However, if the due date was a day, the time that it takes the essay to be written is much shorter.

Effect of Parkinson's Law on UX Design

Parkinson's Law can be applied to creating user experience designs in websites, apps, and software. If we create ways that shorten the time to for users to interact with our designs, they will more likely to complete the task.

For example:

1. Booking a hotel: booking a hotel can take a lot of time to fill out online if there is a lot of information that needs to be inputted. However, as a UX designer, we can make this experience flow much better by creating features like autofill for personal details and a quick and simple booking form. This will save the user time when completing their task, which will encourage them to complete it and choose our product over others.

2. Shopping carts: a shopping cart is very important for purchasing goods and services online from ecommerce sites. However, if the process of creating a cart, editing it, and checking out are too complicated, a user will be more likely to abandon their cart. If we make this experience simple and quick, we will have a higher chance for a user to purchase something.

There are other ways to implement Parkinson's law, such as splitting up the work into smaller chunks to make the user feel more accomplished and productive, and placing design elements in intuitive spots for the user to select more easily.

As a designer, we must stand in the shoes as a consumer. We need to calculate and understand the nuances of a person's time when interacting with out product, and how we can reduce this time while retaining the quality and professionalism of our product.

All in all, we want our user to put in the least amount of effort/time to recieve the maxmimum benefit from out product.

With this article at OpenGenus, you must have the complete idea of Parkinson's Law in UX Design.