Fitts’s Law: The Science Behind Fast and Easy Design When you tap on your phone, press an elevator button, or click a “Submit” button on a website, you are experiencing more than just design—you’re engaging with psychology and mathematics. One of the most important principles that explains why some interactions feel smooth while others feel clumsy is Fitts’s Law . 📖 A Little History Fitts’s Law was introduced in 1954 by psychologist Paul Fitts , who studied how people move when selecting physical targets. His experiments showed a clear pattern: the time to hit a target increases with distance and decreases with size . This insight became a foundation for human-computer interaction (HCI) , ergonomics , and UI/UX design . Today, Fitts’s Law guides how everything from smartphone apps to airplane cockpits are designed. 🔢 What is Fitts’s Law? At its core, Fitts’s Law predicts the time required to move to and select a target . The formula is: T = a + b ⋅ log 2 ( 1 + D W ) ...
Idleness Aversion: Why We Always Feel the Need to Be Doing Something Have you ever caught yourself reaching for your phone the second you had nothing to do? Maybe you're waiting in a queue, sitting alone in silence, or just standing by while food is cooking—and suddenly, without even thinking, you unlock your phone and scroll through an app. You weren’t bored. You weren’t looking for anything. You just didn’t want to sit still. If that sounds familiar, you’ve experienced something called idleness aversion . 🌱 What Exactly Is Idleness Aversion? Idleness aversion is our natural discomfort with being still or doing nothing. Even for a few seconds, our minds feel uneasy when there’s no activity happening. So what do we do? We try to fill the gap—by tapping, checking, scrolling, or doing anything that makes us feel like something’s going on. It’s not about productivity. It’s about staying mentally occupied—even if the action is unnecessary. 📱 Real-Lif...