Applying the Law of Proximity and the Law of Similarity to group-related controls helps users understand the relationships between different elements on an interface. For example, the top buttons on the menu should share similarities in color, shape, and size to indicate that they all belong to the primary navigation bar of a website. Or when an onboarding page opens with a button to “create an account,” the primary action should differ from a secondary action button to “cancel.” In terms of alignment, it’s best to avoid centering large bodies of text, and it should be aligned to the left to make it easier for a user to read.
The Law of Closure in icon design is used to describe functions in a simplified manner despite the gaps between shapes or lines. Overlapping geometric shapes can represent a WIFI connection, for example, that would otherwise be quite complex to represent.
The Law of Common Fate guides users’ attention or provides feedback. When submitting a payment, clicking the submit button should lead the user to the confirmation message page. Similarly when selecting photos to transfer to a document, they should move in the direction the user is moving the mouse.
The Law of Past Experience incorporates common design patterns that make the interface more intuitive and more accessible for users to navigate. For example, the navigation menu should always be placed at the top of the page, and the shopping cart icon should be placed in the top right corner because that’s where they are most commonly found.
Fitts’s Law implies that closer targets are faster to acquire and bigger targets are better. Increasing the size of buttons or adding padding around them makes them easier to click on. Additionally, increasing the spacing between elements reduces the risks of the user clicking on the wrong button. In contrast, the distance users need to move their mouse is minimized when the drop-down menu options are hierarchical based on their relevance to target users.