Hick’s Law and making your menus smaller

Keep it simple and avoid overwhelming people.

You might have noticed that over the past few years the main navigation menus on websites are getting smaller. There’s a reason for this and it isn’t because websites are getting smaller too. On the contrary – it’s because when you have too many choices your brain gets overloaded.

Hick’s Law is named after British psychologist William Hick whose work in the 1950s showed that the more choices people are offered the longer it takes for them to make a decision. If you offer too many choices people are more likely not to choose any…

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