LEADERSHIP IN THEORY
Design Principles in Leadership: Jakob’s Law
Leaders can use Design Principles to design their Leadership Styles
While most ‘laws’ have historic roots, Jakob’s Law originated from the heart of Nielsen Normal Group (NNG). Co-founded with the former VP of research, NNG operated as a consulting firm. They studied users, trying to understand how operating systems can design themselves better.
Jakob Nielsen was not just a usability expert. With references from news websites like the “web’s usability czar” and “the usability Pope”, it was easy to see why he was influential. With his influence, he popularised Jakob’s law.
“Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.” — Jakob’s Law
Jakob’s Law states: “Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.”
It essentially talks about design patterns. These are patterns we see across different applications and websites. For instance, Google and Yahoo! have its search bar placed in the middle of a sea of white.
User interface and experience designers typically adhere to design patterns. It is the reason why we expect our ‘send message’ icon to be on the bottom-right side of our screen, depending on screen size.
How jarring would it be to have an application that places it on the top right?
Having typical design patterns meant shortening the learning process. Users familiarise themselves quickly with a site that looks similar to one they’ve been to. In that same vein, having a different design pattern meant steeper learning curves. Worse, the user may not prefer the new site.
By providing familiar design patterns, users can quickly assimilate and familiarise. Though the Jakob’s Law may be talking about usability, it evidences underlying human psychology.
Humans are inherently preferential to things that they are familiar with and research on that dates as far as 1876. Called the ‘mere-exposure effect’, it describes a phenomenon in which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because we are familiar with them. In social psychology, it is often called the ‘familiarity principle’,
The mere-exposure effect supports Jakob’s Law. For instance, we expect more shopping sites to look the same (e.g. ASOS vs. ZALORA). Having a brand design their website differently throws us off, which causes us to slow down to familiarise ourselves with the terrain.
While advertising and marketing often apply this phenomenon, leaders can also use it in at the workplace.
Jakob’s Law may be a simple statement but it reveals something innate in human nature. We like to be able to anticipate what an experience will be like, based on past experiences. For example, in e-commerce shopping applications, we tend to expect similar user interfaces and experience.
At work, Jakob’s Law can be applied across a variety of functions.
Onboarding Process
Suppose a fresh graduate just joined the design team. The design teams decide to run him through a training program and assign a mentor to help with the assimilation.
For many companies, the assimilation — also known as ‘onboarding’ — time is a cost they have to bear with a price tag starting at $3,000. Onboarding means lost productivity, slower turnover, and lower quality of work. When a senior employee is preoccupied with teaching someone new, that employee is also not able to do other work as productively as before.
The aim is to speed up the onboarding process while retaining its comprehensiveness. Using the Jakob’s Law, the onboarding process can be created to fit something that the new hire has experienced before. For instance, if the new hire typically learns from a digital portal (e.g. online courses), creating a digital onboarding process can help to quicken the familiarisation journey.
Besides the medium, the onboarding process can also be designed to allow the new hire to relate to things that he is familiar with. Through innate psychology, if the new things that he is learning can be related to things he is familiar with, he is more emotionally predisposed to learn about it.
Hiring New People
Unconscious bias often creeps into evaluating and hiring talent. As a result, a great candidate is often let go and poor candidates are given the job. Jakob’s law evidenced that we innately prefer things we are familiar with. In the hiring context, we tend to want to hire people that have similarities with us.
It is also called the similarity attraction bias.
To get rid of this bias in the evaluation process, companies turned to technology. For instance, Unilever relies on an algorithm to sort our applicants, with human judgment coming in only at the last round of the interview.
By understanding that familiarity causes bias, hirers can thus be more effective with their evaluation. The best way around this is to have a hiring committee. By ensuring that there are multiple people with multiple perspectives and biases, skills that are difficult to be judged by algorithms such as soft leadership skills can be evaluated more fairly.
As we navigate the world, many things we experience shape us. They affect the way we perceive and process things in the world around us.
Design principles are created based on observations and behavioral patterns in humans. Though they may be design principles, understanding them fully can give leaders a new edge as they lead with design principles in mind.
Today, people leverage psychology in every sub-sector, from marketing to economics. For leaders, not understanding why people behave in certain ways will inhibit their growth as leaders. Choosing to understand a human being at work a little deeper may take more time, but that is the distinction between a manager and a leader at the workplace.