Definition of Hick's Law: The time M(n) required to make a choice from a menu of n items rises with the log to the base two of n.
It's relatively simple to understand, right?
So from now on, you can use the Hick's Law to find out the amount of time it takes for your friend to make a decision!
It is logarithmic as people subdivide the total collection of choices into categories and eliminate half of the remaining choices at each step. They DO NOT consider each and every choice one-by-one. (Linear Time)
The important fact that needs to be noted is the Rule of Large Menus. Guess why restaurants have big and large menus rather than small ones? It's because of the Rule of Large Menus! (One large menu is more time-efficient than several small submenus supporting the same choices, even if we ignore the time overhead of moving among submenus.)
Another important rule is the Rule of Target Size. The size of a button should be proportional to its expected frequency of use. This explains why our shirts have small buttons! It's because we don't use the buttons often! We only think of it when we put the shirt on!
The Rule of the Infinite Edge is also another rule derived from the Hick's Law. The easiest target rectangles on the screen are those adjacent to its edges.
Hick's Law is widely used. It is used in combat fights, sports (reaction time) and many other things in life! Some of Hick's Law's favourite quotes are:
"Lag time increases significantly with the greater number of techniques"
"It takes 58% more time to pick between two choices"
"It takes about a second to pick a tactic"
"Selection time gets compounded exponentially when a person has to select from several choices"
And how is the Hick's Law logarithmic? It's quite similar to the Fitt's Law. The more choices one is given, the time taken for the person to choose is exponentially proportional to the number of choices he is given. Again, the time taken increases by the factor of 10.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/f/c/f/fcfb68e3f4f84b245eb0074178873575.png
Here's the Hick's Law formula!
T -- Time
b -- Constant that can be determined empirically by fitting a line to measure data.
+1 -- Because there is uncertainty about whether to respond or not, as well as about which response to make
n -- The number of choices given
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