What is Hick's Law?

Building a startup involves a constant stream of decisions. You decide which features to build, which markets to enter, and which candidates to hire. Your customers face similar hurdles when they interact with your product. They decide where to click, which plan to buy, and how to navigate your interface. Understanding how humans process these choices is fundamental to building a product that people actually want to use. This brings us to a psychological principle known as Hick’s Law.

Hick’s Law, or the Hick-Hyman Law, is a principle that describes the time it takes for a person to make a decision as a result of the possible choices they have. Specifically, it states that increasing the number of choices will increase the decision time logarithmically. It was named after British and American psychologists William Edmund Hick and Ray Hyman in 1952. They were looking for a way to measure the human information processing capacity.

In a startup context, this law is often cited in the world of User Experience or UX design. However, its implications reach far beyond the layout of a website. It affects internal team structures, product roadmaps, and marketing strategies. If you provide too many options, you create friction. Friction is the enemy of momentum in a new business.

The law is expressed mathematically as RT = a + b log2 (n + 1). In this formula, RT is the reaction time. The variables a and b are constants that depend on the conditions of the task. The variable n is the number of equally probable alternatives. Even if you are not a math enthusiast, the takeaway is clear. The time it takes to process information grows as you add more items to the mix.

This is not a linear relationship. The increase in time slows down as the number of choices gets very high. For example, the jump in cognitive load from one choice to two choices is much more significant than the jump from 50 choices to 51 choices. This is because the brain begins to categorize and group information when faced with high volumes. However, the initial friction of having to sort through many options can lead to decision fatigue.

Decision fatigue is a real risk for both your users and your staff. When the brain is overwhelmed by the number of stimuli, it often defaults to the path of least resistance. This might mean the user leaves your site without buying anything. Or it might mean your lead engineer picks the easiest solution instead of the most effective one because the project scope was too cluttered with minor tasks.

When you are building your first version of a product, there is a temptation to include every feature your competitors have. You want to show value. You want to prove that your tool is powerful. But every menu item, every button, and every configuration toggle you add increases the cognitive load on your user. This is where Hick’s Law acts as a guardrail for product managers.

Consider the onboarding process for a new software tool. If the first screen asks the user to fill out ten fields, choose a theme, upload a photo, and invite five friends, the reaction time will be high. The user has to process each request and decide if they want to do it now or later. This creates a high bounce rate.

Instead, successful founders often employ a technique called progressive disclosure. You only show the user what they need to see at that specific moment. By limiting the choices on each individual screen, you keep the decision time low. You are guiding them through a sequence of simple decisions rather than one complex one. This maintains the momentum of the user experience.

This principle also applies to your pricing page. Many startups offer five or six different tiers with long lists of features for each. A prospective customer looking at that table has to perform a lot of mental work to figure out which one fits their needs. Reducing these choices to three clear options, basic, pro, and enterprise, significantly lowers the barrier to conversion. You are doing the work of categorization for the customer.

In the realm of design, Hick’s Law is frequently compared to Fitts’s Law. While Hick’s Law deals with the number of choices, Fitts’s Law deals with the physical movement required to make a choice. Fitts’s Law states that the time required to move to a target is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target.

In a digital interface, this means that a button should be large enough to hit and close enough to where the user’s cursor already is. If you are designing a mobile app, Fitts’s Law dictates where you put the primary action button so the thumb can reach it easily. Hick’s Law, meanwhile, dictates how many buttons should be there in the first place.

Both laws are about reducing the effort required to interact with a system. If you have a massive button (Fitts’s Law) but it is surrounded by twenty other massive buttons (Hick’s Law), the user still experiences a delay. They might find the button easily, but they will hesitate before clicking it. You need to balance the physical ease of the interaction with the cognitive ease of the decision.

For a founder, understanding the distinction helps in diagnosing why a product might be failing. Is the user unable to find the button, or are they simply confused by the number of things they could be doing? One is a visual hierarchy problem, and the other is a choice architecture problem.

There are specific scenarios where you should look at your business through the lens of Hick’s Law. One is the recruitment process. If you give a candidate a take home test with five different prompts to choose from, you might be delaying their submission. If you give your team a list of twenty potential key results for the quarter, you are likely ensuring that none of them get the focus they deserve.

You can also use this law to improve internal meetings. If a meeting agenda has fifteen items, the group will spend more time switching contexts than solving problems. Narrowing the focus of a meeting to two or three critical choices ensures that the team has the mental energy to go deep on each one.

However, it is important to recognize when Hick’s Law does not apply or should be intentionally ignored. For example, experts and power users often prefer more choices. A professional video editor wants a cluttered interface with every tool available at a single click. They have moved beyond the logarithmic reaction time because they have developed muscle memory and mental shortcuts.

If you are building a tool for specialists, simplifying the interface too much can actually frustrate them. They would rather have a complex dashboard that allows for high speed work than a simple one that hides advanced features behind menus. The unknown here for many founders is where that line exists between a novice user and a power user. How do you cater to both without violating the law for the beginner or boring the expert?

As you look at your current operations, you should ask yourself if you are making it too hard for people to help you. Are your internal documents too long? Is your pitch deck giving investors too many different data points to process? Is your product trying to be everything to everyone?

We still don’t fully know the long term effects of digital choice overload on brand loyalty. Does a user eventually tire of a simple interface and go looking for something more complex? Or does the simplicity of a product create a lasting psychological bond because it feels like a relief from the rest of the world? These are questions that you will have to answer through your own data and observation.

In the end, Hick’s Law is about respect. It is about respecting the limited cognitive bandwidth of your users and your team. By reducing the noise and focusing on the few decisions that actually matter, you create a foundation for a business that is solid and functional. You are not just building features. You are building a path of least resistance for people to achieve their goals.